


Dressing Esca

by ForzaDelDestino, savagesnakes (halfpennybuddha)



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Digital Art, First Time, M/M, Sexual Tension, Snark, topping and bottoming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-06
Updated: 2012-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-03 03:06:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForzaDelDestino/pseuds/ForzaDelDestino, https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfpennybuddha/pseuds/savagesnakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus is an American, recently discharged from the army, and living in London with his Uncle Aquila. He goes to work for his uncle’s art packing and shipping company, currently contracted to pack and deliver ancient Roman statuary and other objects from London to a museum in the US. Esca, son of Uncle Aquila’s former Scottish housekeeper, is an intriguing thorn in Marcus’ side: intense, contradictory, oddly attractive…and quite possibly the worst-dressed person Marcus has ever known.</p>
<p>[Inspired by the series of photographs entitled "Jamie Bell: What Not to Wear," posted in LJ’s ninth_eagle on August 14, by ninja_orange. The photos depict the evolution of Mr Bell's fashion sense, ranging from the really, truly awful to sleek stylishness and simple, well-chosen interview garb. Sources and Acknowledgements follow the last chapter.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winterstorrm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterstorrm/gifts).



> Story by [ForzaDelDestino](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ForzaDelDestino/pseuds/ForzaDelDestino)  
> Art by [savagesnakes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/halfpennybuddha)
> 
> All artwork by savagesnakes is protected under the [ creative commons copyright license](www.creativecommons.org). To view the works individually, or in a larger size, please [FOLLOW THIS LINK](http://neonbuddha.livejournal.com/13982.html).

  


 

"Esca," said Marcus Aquila with exasperation. "That...that suit is a travesty."

He himself was soberly and stylishly dressed in a dark grey suit, white shirt, and powder blue tie, in preparation for a dinner Uncle Aquila was hosting for some elderly mates from his army days. They were due to arrive at any moment...and who should come walking into the entrance hall but Esca, wearing a dark jacket, white shirt, and black tie over a truly disgraceful pair of grey jeans, baggy, wrinkled, and perforated at the knees. Rumpled hair, a cross between chestnut-auburn and a blondish bronze, was all askew, calling attention to a pair of slightly unfortunate ears.

"You can't possibly be going out in that getup."

"You needn't worry that your uncle's guests will see this," Esca replied calmly. "And yes, I'm going out. I'm meeting friends at some new, upscale club, but I'll sneak out the back way so those geriatric, toffee-nosed colonels and generals don't have heart attacks at the sight of me."

"No upscale club is going to let you in looking like that."

"You'd be surprised," said Esca smugly as he turned smartly on his heel and headed for the back door.

Marcus snorted and then took a rapid look at his own reflection in the hallway mirror. His image looked back at him: tall and dark-haired, his broad-shouldered, athletic body neatly encased in his well-cut suit. Regular, chiseled features in a face most called handsome, hazel green eyes, and an undeniably sensual, full-lipped mouth. It was when Marcus moved that the image was, in his own estimation, marred, by the slight limp that materialized on damp, rainy days, or when the weather was particularly chilly. It was something he had grown accustomed to, over the past two years, and was far less noticeable now than it had been when he first moved from America to London to live with his Uncle Aquila. It might even—according to the doctors—go away, with the proper physical therapy and regular exercise. The limp—or the injury that had caused it—was courtesy of an IED overseas. To put it more accurately, the small, unsophisticated explosive device had destroyed a portion of the chassis of the jeep he'd been riding in. The vehicle had flipped over on top of him, and he had been lucky to escape with only a leg injury.

The disability had put an end to his military career, at any rate. The youngest in a long line of army officers—on both sides of the Atlantic—in the Aquila family, Marcus had never thought he would end up seeking employment as a junior manager and product designer at a London-based _art packing company_ , of all things. He was a soldier, damn it all to hell; since childhood he had dreamed of becoming a good officer, a dedicated and inspiring leader; all his life he had wanted to be in the army. Well, under the circumstances, the army didn’t seem to want him, which had left him in a difficult situation. He was a country boy by birth, and if this hadn’t been the twenty-first century, he might have turned to farming to earn his living; but the times being what they were, and small farms not being as easy to come by or as profitable as one might like, he had to be grateful for his current job…as far removed from his lifelong aspirations as it might be.

Calleva Fine Arts was one of the most prestigious companies of art packers and shippers in the UK; with branches in France, Spain, and Italy, it worked for some of the largest museums and best private collections in Europe, and had recently opened an office in the States. Marcus had joined the UK staff with a mind filled with reservations and doubts; a month in hospital, and another gloomy six months hobbling about with crutches, had done little to renew his former physical self-confidence. Nonetheless, a year after his army discharge he had relocated to London, settled into the room that had been his when he visited his uncle as a child, and had begun learning the ropes of the art packing business. Eventually—after several more months spent in unmitigated gloom, during which Marcus saw a physical therapist almost daily, a psychotherapist weekly, and fought valiantly against the self-pity that threatened to engulf him—he had realized, albeit reluctantly, that he was well suited to the work. He was a good organizer, he knew how to direct and oversee Calleva’s employees, from the men who measured the works of art to the men who packed them, not to mention the men who custom-built the crates and dealt with the transport. Why not be satisfied? After all, there was room to rise in the company, and he was still in his twenties, energetic, hard-working, and full of ideas.

Of course, this job would never have landed in his lap if it hadn’t been for Uncle Aquila. His uncle was a partner in the business, and had put Marcus forward for the position, shortly after the young man took up full-time residence in his home. The pay wasn’t bad; the hours might be long, and from time to time there was travel involved, but there was also no reason why he couldn’t accumulate a tidy nest egg on what he was earning…if he was careful and didn’t squander his income. Which he wasn’t likely to do. Self-discipline came easily to him, after his years of military training, and really—what would he squander money on anyway?

No doubt he could have stayed in the US and worked at Calleva’s new American facility. But the London office had offered him a better, more challenging position than he could have found there, and he genuinely enjoyed his uncle’s company. Still…if everything worked out well, he might be able to go back home to the States someday, buy a house, a piece of land, settle down. Settle down with…?

"Who was that?" Uncle Aquila asked from the door to his study. Tall, massive in fact, like so many of the men in the Aquila family, with a thick head of white hair, piercing eyes, and a gently sardonic smile. At the moment, his eyebrows were raised and his mouth a little twisted at the sight of his nephew’s exasperated expression.

"Esca," replied Marcus flatly, the corners of his mouth turning down.

"Gone out, has he? Well, I didn't suppose he'd want to spend time with a bunch of old army farts anyway. Even if Sassticca has made his favorite apple crumble with cream."

“You mean, _your_ favorite apple crumble,” Marcus said wryly, smiling. “No need to mention Esca! You wax poetic every time Sassticca serves it.”

“It’s our Italian ancestry, Marcus,” Uncle Aquila said jokingly. “We’re a passionate lot, don’t you think? About almost everything.”

Marcus shrugged a little uncomfortably and turned his eyes to the window, where rivulets of rain were streaking the windowpane with silver. A passionate lot, the Italians? Well, he had no desire to adhere to the stereotype. And passion seemed to have passed him by, or abandoned him after his injury cast him adrift into a civilian, rather than military, environment. Hmmph. And tonight he would be stuck listening to—what was it Esca had called them? A bunch of toffee-nosed, geriatric generals, or colonels, or whatever, bragging about their long-ago successful campaigns. And it was peeing with rain outside, for Chrissake. Why the Aquilas of several generations ago had left their warm, sunny homeland to come _here_ , was slightly beyond his understanding. His own father had left England for a home on the Mississippi River, never coming back to London except on the occasional holiday visit. But he, Marcus, had to admit that in spite of the frequent rain and grey skies he loved this city, or at least found it fascinating, with its history, its idiosyncratic neighborhoods, its museums and libraries, its remnants of the fortresses and dwelling places of Romans, Saxons, Normans, medieval rulers and Elizabethans, and its increasingly diverse population. And he had spent so much time in London during his childhood—summer holidays, mostly—that it took very little getting used to, when he made his move from the States into his uncle’s spacious residence. In many ways, it was almost like coming home, except—

“Everybody can tell you’re an American,” Esca had once said to him in a rather dismissive tone of voice, and Marcus could scarcely argue with him, even if he argued with him about almost everything else. He had never picked up any trace of a British accent, and in spite of his stint in the military academy at West Point, in New York State, his voice still held a few trace elements of what Esca sardonically called the "aw shucks, ma'am" speech of the American South.

“Did he say he’d be out all night?” Uncle Aquila asked, and Marcus wrenched his mind back to the present day. “I’ll tell Sassticca to save him something to eat.”

“He didn’t say,” Marcus muttered, grimacing. “But I expect he’ll be back when he’s hungry. Unless some poor, benighted girl, near-sighted enough not to notice his horrible excuse for clothing, decides to take him home and feed him.”

His uncle gave an involuntary bark of laughter, but whatever he was on the verge of saying was interrupted by the peal of the doorbell. Drawing himself up to his full, impressive height, he went to answer it, still chuckling. This gave Marcus a moment to duck into the drawing room, and pour himself a hefty slug of whiskey from the decanter on the sideboard. Thus fortified, he felt he could face the occasional pitying look from one of Uncle Aquila’s old comrades, and would only hope he wasn’t in for a long evening of tall tales that he would find almost as boring as Esca did.

Esca, naturally, had managed to escape the whole thing, and was now no doubt dancing and drinking with a bevy of his mates from uni and their girlfriends. Biting his lip with a combination of envy and annoyance, Marcus glanced through the window at the rain-soaked garden behind the house, hoping to find gardening tools lying about, or some job or another left incomplete.

No such luck. Esca must have finished tidying up the flower beds (not that there were any flowers at this time of year), swept up fallen twigs, and put all of the tools away in their proper place. There was nothing to criticize him for, or take him to task over, when the wretched interloper finally did decide to show his face.

Marcus wasn’t quite certain what it was about Esca, these days, that grated on his nerves so. It wasn't as though he disliked the young man; they might not be exactly what one could call friends, but Marcus had always had a certain degree of respect for him. It was silly as well to think of him as an interloper, since he had been living—on and off—in this house for some time, doing odd jobs for Uncle Aquila when he wasn’t with his mates, or holed up in the library, or doing undergraduate, and then post graduate study, at uni. And that was actually Marcus’s own doing; if it hadn't been for him, there would be no Esca thundering down staircases at all hours, singing in the shower, and reciting Latin verbs as he raked leaves at the bottom of the garden. It was he, Marcus, who had brought Esca here to begin with.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He remembered the circumstances as vividly as if they were yesterday, although they had taken place when he was nearly seventeen, spending a summer with his uncle, as he often did, a welcome respite from the nailing heat of Mississippi in July. Uncle Aquila’s Scottish housekeeper, the handsome, if intimidating, Mrs MacCunoval, had made something of a pet of him, mothering him furiously if he felt tired or under the weather, and making him massive breakfasts and mammoth fry-ups of the sort she felt were necessary for “a great, growing lad.” She arrived every morning at half past seven and left around four (unless her services were required for a dinner party), occasionally bringing her youngest son, Esca, with her. The boy avoided members of the household like the plague, but Marcus grew used to seeing him zipping around corners in his faded tee shirts and grubby jeans, or lingering unobtrusively by the garden door. They rarely spoke, but from time to time Marcus caught the younger boy giving him a sidelong glance that mingled wary suspicion with curiosity, lips pressed together in a tight line, grey-blue eyes peering at him from a narrow face of planes and angles, straight eyebrows partly hidden by the wayward fringe of his russet brown hair, in which strands of foxy auburn, bronze, and blond always caught the light.

The Esca of those days looked much younger than his age, small, thin, and pale, and so the fair-minded athlete in Marcus’ soul was outraged the day he heard shrill, raucous voices on the pavement and he opened the door to find the housekeeper’s son being set upon by a group of local bullies. The boys were mostly, like Esca, around twelve years of age, but they were bigger, and there was a _group_ of them, for pity’s sake, at least six against one. The leader of the pack, an older, hefty youth about Marcus’s age and height, had knocked Esca onto his back and was standing over him, laughing, as the boy glared back at him, chin lifted, in an admirable display of defiance in the face of defeat. The ringleader laughed again, and drew one foot back to kick. This struck Marcus as so ridiculously unfair that, without thinking twice, he had shouted and barreled down the front steps to confront them.

They outnumbered him, of course, and might have been able to take him down, but he was such a formidable sight, this angry, muscular, well-built _outsider_ charging towards them with narrowed eyes and hands closed into fists, that they backed away, and, as Marcus roared at them to get the hell out, turned and ran. The ringleader, in spite of being Marcus’s match in size, retreated at the last moment as Marcus jerked his elbow back in preparation for a good, solid punch. Panting with indignation and frustrated energy, Marcus had watched him go as Esca scrambled to his feet—dirty, bruised, and bleeding from a scraped brow and swollen lower lip, but otherwise intact—and walked slowly, but with a kind of dignity, into the house.

Mrs MacCunoval had practically smothered him with her gratitude after that, though how she found out about the incident was anybody’s guess; it was doubtful that Esca had said anything about it. Certainly he never said anything about it to his rescuer, although he had mumbled an almost inaudible “Thanks,” as he passed Marcus on his way into the house. A day later, Marcus had suggested to his uncle that he tell his housekeeper to bring the boy to work with her every day, and offer him a few hours of work per week.

“It’ll keep him off the street and out of trouble,” he remembered saying, reluctantly impressed with Esca’s demeanor. “He’s a scrappy kid.” Uncle Aquila had obviously agreed with him, and Esca had done small jobs around the house and garden until the summer holiday was over. He was a poker-faced youngster, and his expression, more often than not, was rather sullen, but he was obviously intelligent, and before long Uncle Aquila offered him access to his library. When he wasn’t working, he could be found hunched over a book in the kitchen, elbows propped on the table, a look of fierce concentration on that intense and angular face.

Marcus himself paid little attention to Esca for the remainder of that summer, having been preoccupied with other things. Foremost among these were thoughts of the big-breasted cheerleader, back home in the States, to whom he had lost his virginity at fifteen, and with whom he still enjoyed the occasional rambunctious shag (she was older than he, and away at university except for the midterm and summer holidays). Another thing that had nagged at the back of his mind was that, as much as he enjoyed his romps with the bodacious Kelly Ann, his eyes were also drawn to the buff, golden-haired quarterback of his football team at school. There had been one or two embarrassing moments when he found himself thinking of Bradley (and what he looked like naked in the shower after football practice) even as Kelly Ann clamped her moist and talented lips round his cock. Not the sort of thing he could let on about, to the other boys (certainly not to the magnificent Bradley), or even to his uncle, with whom he had always felt comfortable discussing any subject under the sun. And he was applying to West Point in the coming year—his last at high school—in the hope of someday becoming an officer, following in the footsteps of so many of his older relations.

So engrossed had Marcus been with all of these issues, especially after his return to Mississippi and school, that he had corresponded with his uncle less frequently than usual. It had taken him by surprise therefore, to learn, over the course of a telephone conversation, that the comely Mrs MacCunoval, her husband, and their two older sons, had met with a horrible, fatal accident on the motorway. They had been driving from Edinburgh down to London in a rainstorm, after a weekend with friends, Uncle Aquila explained, and Esca was now in temporary residence with an aunt.

“She lives somewhere north of London,” his uncle said soberly. “And she’s a well-meaning soul, but has neither the time nor the wherewithal to look after him. I’ve been wondering—“

“Why not have him to live with you?” Marcus had heard himself say. “You’ve talked about wanting to oversee his education. Mrs—his mother said he’d improved drastically in his studies, since you let him borrow your books and read in the library. And he can help out around the house until…until you find another housekeeper.”

“Yes,” Uncle Aquila had replied slowly, after a moment of silence. “That’s quite a good idea. I think his aunt would be more than willing to hand over guardianship to me, for the present at any rate. You’ve no objection, I suppose, to sharing space with the boy when you’re here on holiday. I expect…well, I expect you know how he’s feeling at the moment.”

Yes, Marcus did know, and no, he had no serious objection to Esca’s presence. It wasn’t as though the boy ever got in his way. And he was sorry, very sorry, for him. He knew, after all, what it was like to be orphaned.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Marcus!” Uncle Aquila called from the hall, and once again his nephew abandoned his memories and forced his mind back to the present. Respectful and dutiful, he straightened his jacket, adjusted his tie, and slid the empty whiskey glass back onto the sideboard. Taking a deep breath—it would be ungenerous to begrudge his uncle his dinner party—he squared his shoulders and stepped forward into the hallway. If things became too dreadful, or too boring, he could always plead fatigue from a long day at work, and retire to bed early.

As it transpired, the dinner was relatively painless, because his uncle’s old friend and sparring partner of his Sandhurst days, Claud Something-or-other (it was a very long, Greek-sounding name, beginning with an H, that Marcus heard but promptly forgot), got quite drunk after the pudding, and left early, the other men going with him, in part to see him safely home. There had been no pitying remarks about Marcus’s short-lived military career, and only one joking comment about his family’s penchant for giving its sons Latin names.

“Marcus _Flavius_ Aquila, eh?” Claud Whatsisname had muttered, grinning. “Should— _hic!_ —go into law or politics with a name like that.”

“No politics, thanks,” replied Marcus, doing his best to sound polite, and everybody had laughed, to his great relief.

“Well, my boy,” Uncle Aquila said placatingly, when the front door closed behind the last of his tipsy guests. “It was good of you to put up with us, when I’m sure you were dying to get away like our young friend Esca. Have you any plans for tomorrow?”

Marcus shrugged and shook his head; perhaps because of the rain, his bad leg ached, and he wanted nothing more than to get into bed and take an Ambien to help him sleep.

“You know, you ought to get out more,” his uncle said, almost chidingly, as Marcus headed for the stairs. “There are plenty of things, in London, to keep a young man entertained. “I don’t know much about the nightclubs, and so on, at my age, but you might ask Esca, or Cottia—“

“I think I’m a bit beyond the club-hopping stage,” Marcus said abruptly, but then he smiled at his uncle to soften the harshness of his tone. After all, he had only meant to be kind, and had no idea how the thought of mingling in the partially strobe-lit, crowded and overheated dimness of a club, surrounded by sweaty youths and girls in glossy, abbreviated garments, as the pounding beat of the latest pop hits blasted at everybody’s eardrums, made his nephew cringe within.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Ambien worked its usual magic, and Marcus slept soundly until shortly past seven, awakening to a loud thump somewhere on the floor above. He groaned and pulled the pillow over his head.

Another, louder, thump brought him wide awake, and he half sat up, realizing that the noises were coming from the general vicinity of Esca’s room. The upper floor had been used for servant’s quarters, in the days of Uncle Aquila’s parents, but Uncle Aquila himself had never had a live-in housekeeper or cook. Sassticca, Mrs MacCunoval’s replacement, lived fifteen minutes away and came to work by bus, and the tiny rooms on the top floor had long ago been opened up to form two comfortable guest bedrooms and Esca’s own lair.

Another earthshattering thump, and Marcus wrenched open his bedroom door and stuck his head out. “Esca! What the fu—“  He heard Uncle Aquila on the landing below, and continued, “What in blazes are you doing up there?”

Esca’s pale face and rumpled hair appeared over the stair railing. “Packing, of course. Easter term starts this week.”

“Well, do it quietly, will you?” grumbled Marcus. “I didn’t realize you’d come home last night.”

“I’ll take the trunk downstairs later,” Esca replied, as though he hadn’t heard. “Lee’s giving me a lift tomorrow morning.”

Lee—Liathan—was Esca’s fellow sufferer at Cambridge, a handsome, dark-haired, academically stellar French boy whose family seemed to have a great deal of money, not to mention land somewhere around Avignon. Liathan himself harbored a proprietary attitude toward young Mr MacCunoval that Marcus found baffling, and would have been annoyed by if it hadn’t seemed so silly. Esca had spent the Christmas holidays with him and thought him clever and amusing, although Marcus, who had met him several times, considered him to be neither.

“Don’t wait until midnight to do it,” Marcus snapped, scowling. “If you’re planning to drag that trunk down the stairs. Some of us have to go to work tomorrow.”

“Right,” murmured Esca, raising his eyebrows. “Your wish is my command, _dominus_. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”

He took several steps down the stairs, and Marcus saw that he was wearing faded grey jeans, loose and shredding at the ankles, a ribbon belt, and a white shirt, open at the collar and emblazoned all over with blue hearts.

“What?” said Esca, a little defensively, when Marcus closed his eyes as if in pain. “I didn’t wake you when I came in last night, did I?”

“No,” replied Marcus, opening his eyes again. “But what you’ve got on would give anybody nightmares. Tell me you’re not going out of the house looking like that.”

“What’s wrong with me?” Esca asked, running fingers through his hair until it stood on end.

“Where do you want me to start?” Marcus said in a weary voice. “Though I admit the shirt’s marginally better than that hairy sweater vest you wore last weekend.”

“Excuse me, Beau Brummell,” Esca said dryly, shoving his thoroughly disheveled hair back from his brow. “Your pardon, sir. Now, where did I put that bloody cravat?”

With both hands, he mimed knotting an elaborate neck cloth and settling a hat atop his unruly locks.

“Sorry,” said Marcus, smiling in spite of himself. “What you wear is none of my business. How was the club last night? Do women actually condescend to dance with you when you’re dressed like that?”

“Yeah, they do, mate,” said Esca, grinning cheerfully as he descended the stairs to Marcus’ level. “Plenty of women. Blokes as well. They might even condescend to dance with _you_ , if you lowered yourself to come out with us. Cottia says her friends from uni all want to meet you.”

“Really,” muttered Marcus in withering tones.

“Of course it’s just because you’re pretty,” Esca went on, unwithered. “And not because of how you dress.”

“You’re joking,” said Marcus, looking at Esca’s shapeless jeans with distaste. “And I am _not_ pretty, if you don’t mind. Well, to each his own.”

“ _Suum cuique_ ,” Esca responded coolly, still smiling. “Or, _de gustibus non est disputandum_.”

"What the hell can anybody do with Latin in this day and age?" Marcus asked curiously, as Esca continued down the stairs.

Esca turned and narrowed his eyes at him. They were as clear a grey-blue as they had been in his childhood, and disconcertingly sharp.

" _You_ can read it. _You_ studied it."

"I had no choice," Marcus replied, frowning. "At school. But you’ve kept on with it, at university. Why punish yourself?"

"I like it," said Esca simply. Marcus rolled his own eyes towards the ceiling and retreated to his bedroom, where he rummaged in his closet for a clean shirt. He himself had never bothered with fashion or followed the trends in male apparel, but honestly, what could Esca be thinking when he opened his wardrobe door in the morning?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“What is it, exactly, that you’re planning to study for your doctorate?” Marcus asked Esca over breakfast, as his yawning uncle slathered spoonfuls of cherry preserves onto his toast and Sassticca, clucking, deposited a freshly replenished coffee pot on the table.

He had only recently learned that Esca, having received his Bachelor’s degree, intended to pursue post-graduate study. He would, he promised Uncle Aquila, continue to do the gardening and odd jobs in the house during the summer months, and was even earning a little extra money with part-time work for a publishing company, checking printed texts for typos and other errors, what he described grimly as “slave labor.”

“I’ll be reading Romano-British history, basically,” he replied, upon Marcus’s prodding. “With an emphasis on the material culture of the Celts.”

Marcus snorted, but he knew well enough that Esca was clever, was good with languages, bright enough to merit a scholarship at Cambridge. He now spoke and read several Gaelic languages as well as Latin, and he and Marcus (whose prep school years had given him a decent grounding in the latter) occasionally hurled insults at each other in the mother tongue of Julius Caesar.

“Sounds boring,” Marcus said, frowning, but Uncle Aquila obviously disagreed, launching into a one-sided discussion of recently-excavated relics of siege warfare from Roman Britain, to which Esca contributed the occasional comment. He was fiddling with the unfastened top button of his ridiculous shirt, and Marcus was startled, and not a little disconcerted, to find that he had been staring at the smooth, creamy pallor of the skin below Esca’s prominent collarbones.

Somewhat to his relief, Marcus saw little of Esca after breakfast, although he was amazed to find the trunk sitting neatly in the front hall well before the dinner hour. Either the young man had been, indeed, as quiet as a mouse, or he himself had been too deeply engrossed in reviewing his design for a crate meant to hold heavy marble sculpture to notice any thumping on the stairs. Either that, or his iPod headphones had drowned out the noise. Later that evening, however, he emerged, laptop under his arm, from his small study—across the hall from Uncle Aquila’s much larger one—to find a mess of boots, trainers, unmatched socks, and unsavory-looking jumpers piled on the floor next to the trunk.

“Good lord,” he muttered, looking helplessly at the mess. “What—?”

“Oh, it’s Esca’s, of course,” Uncle Aquila said calmly from his own study door. “He’s sworn to tidy up the lot before he goes to bed.”

“He’d better,” Marcus retorted with an exasperated look, as he set his laptop down on a side table and flipped it open. “Or somebody will trip over it and break his neck. If this stuff were mine, I’d simply throw it in the dustbin.”

Above them came a clatter of bottles being dumped into a bag, followed by a loud thudding of feet on the stairway.

"Where's me cleanser?" Esca bellowed from the top of the stairs. “I’ve lost me cleanser.”

"That boy is a train wreck waiting to happen," Marcus muttered from behind his laptop.

"Boy?" said Uncle Aquila, raising his eyebrows. "He's not all that much younger than you are…four, five years at the most. And his academic resumé's impressive. I was looking at it only this afternoon."

Marcus' only response was a histrionic shrug.

"Yo, Marcus!" Esca shouted again, doing a credible imitation of an American accent. "I'm talkin' ta you, man!" And then, dropping back into his normal speech: "Have you seen me cleanser?"

"Will you shut up!" Marcus roared in the direction of the stairs. "Nobody's seen your bloody cleanser. If you leave this mess on the floor all night, and I trip over it, I will personally beat you to within an inch of your life."

"Sounds kinky," said Esca, and disappeared.

Marcus scowled and put his headphones back on, to drown out the sounds of Esca’s packing and Uncle Aquila's dry chuckle as he returned to his study.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Marcus,” said Cottia, folding long, coltish legs beneath her as she collapsed onto Marcus’ armchair. “You really do need to get out more. In fact, you need a proper group of friends. And you need to go on holiday. Or something. Get yourself a lover, for example.”

“Thanks, babe,” Marcus grumbled, flinging himself onto his bed and piling pillows behind his neck. “I’ll just quit my job and sail round the world, shall I? Find myself a wife in every port.”

“There’s no need for you to get your back up,” Cottia said snappishly, twining strands of her red hair around pale fingers. “Sometimes you’re so like Esca…both so defensive about everything.”

“I,” said Marcus, eyes rolling upward, “am nothing like Esca.”

“’There are none so blind…’” intoned Cottia, kicking at Marcus’s ankle with her bare foot. “Oh! Sorry! Was that your bad leg?”

“No,” Marcus replied, with a little, lopsided smile. “But I should have said it was, and let you feel guilty.”

“Pfffff!” said Cottia, rolling her own eyes, and Marcus laughed.

He had known Cottia since childhood, and even now, as a young woman, she reminded him of a little red fox, with her thin, pointed face, golden eyes, and flaming hair. She was an old friend and confidante, and for that reason had license to say more or less whatever she pleased to him. Cottia, only a few years younger than he, had grown up in the house next door, and during Marcus’s summer visits to London, they had met in the garden behind Uncle Aquila’s house (a loose board in the wall between it and her family’s garden allowing her access) to share sweets, commiserate with each other over their problems, and devise elaborate plots—none of which were carried out—against their enemies. No sooner had Esca joined the Aquila household than Cottia did her best to overcome his reserve, and had succeeded so well that Marcus sometimes wondered at their rapport, claiming that their Scottish ancestry must have something to do with it. At once point, he had even thought that the two had come to some kind of understanding, although it soon became clear that they were merely comfortable in their friendship, with no romantic inclinations whatsoever.

“What makes you think,” he said now, “that I am like Esca in any way?”

“You’re both very quiet about yourselves,” she complained, beginning, in an absentminded sort of way, to braid her hair. “I know Esca goes out to the clubs, and likes to dance and drink and has plenty of mates, but I don’t know a thing about his love life. And you! You’ve become so bloody secretive, Marcus, it’s absurd. After all, I tell _you_ all my sad tales of woe.”

“Tales of woe?” scoffed Marcus, adopting an expression of stern, paternal disapproval. “Right. Tell me another one. The only woeful people in your life are the sorry boys you’ve turned down, my girl. And I’m not secretive, I just don’t…have anything to tell, at the moment.”

“There’s another thing that’s absurd,” Cottia said crossly, abandoning her braid and tapping Marcus smartly on the knee. “I mean, look at you! You’re bloody gorgeous, everybody thinks so, and fit, and if you peeled that shirt off, I’d probably see that you’ve got an eight pack. And you’re even _nice_ , and _honorable_ , and all that old-fashioned nonsense. So why aren’t the ladies queuing at your bedroom door, I ask you. No, don’t answer that. It’s because you’ve been holed up in your uncle’s house, paying more attention to Calleva Fine Arts than to your co—”

She concluded her harangue with a squawk as Marcus thwhacked her on the head with a cushion.

“Thanks, Cottia,” he said wryly, as she flung the cushion back at him and attempted to put her hair to rights. “But I’m perfectly okay on my own just now. As for Esca’s, er, love life, I don’t know beans about it, though I shudder to think.”

Cottia looked at him rather reproachfully, but he simply raised his eyebrows at her. No, he didn’t know anything about Esca’s private life, and didn’t want to, although he wondered, casually, how any female could see past that awful façade of ill-fitting, torn, and rumpled articles of clothing. Perhaps he looked better without them; and Marcus frowned, because this did not bear thinking about. And just _why in hell_ was he _thinking_ such a thing?

As for resembling Esca in any way…well, they might not be alike in most respects, but they were both bereft of parents who had died relatively young.  Marcus’ father had resigned his army commission after only ten years in the service, the only army officer in the history of the family to have done so—causing one cousin to mutter that he had disgraced the honor of the Aquila name—and after a successful career as a professor of military history, had succumbed to the sudden onslaught of a rare cancer. Marcus’s mother, who had always suspected his illness to have been the result of exposure to Agent Orange, or some other military herbicide-defoliant, had died not long after, and Marcus had then been placed in the care of an aunt and her pompous bureaucrat of a husband. Marcus had hated the husband, and the husband had hated him right back…being only too pleased to allow the boy to spend his summers in England with his uncle

In his uncle’s house, and under his somewhat laissez-faire summer guardianship, Marcus had felt free to indulge in his dreams of a future as an army officer, and suppress his feelings of loss and abandonment. In spite of the horror and moral ambiguity of the war in which his father had been involved—the Vietnam War, a conflict his father regarded with mixed feelings of guilt and sorrow—the idea of being a perfect soldier continued to appeal to Marcus, and he still remembered the shining pride he had felt when he received his commission as second lieutenant upon graduation from West Point. His dreams of a distinguished career were in the dust now, and the disappointment still weighted heavily on his inner thoughts in spite of all the psychotherapy. But he had never spoken of it to Cottia…to anyone…and wasn’t about to do so at any time in the foreseeable future.

“Hey,” he said loudly, in an effort to change the subject, or at least to turn her attention away from the absence of romance in his life. “Guess what Calleva’s latest contract is for?”

He thought this might distract her, and it did, for Cottia was reading art history at university, and she occasionally stopped by the Calleva warehouse to see what sort of objects the company was handling at any given time.

“ _Mar_ cus,” Cottia replied, drawing her delicate eyebrows together. “I’m not a mind reader. Just tell me. Packing up ancient erotic wall paintings from Pompeii, are we?”

“You have a one-track mind,” Marcus stated, swatting at her ankle as she aimed another kick at him. “But you’re not too far off. Nothing erotic that I’m aware of, but definitely Roman. A private collector in Somerset is lending his Roman sculpture and mosaics to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. We’re to measure everything, build custom crates, pack the lot, and ship it to the States, by air of course. And one of us will go over as courier, because the collector can’t take the time out to do it himself.”

“Oh!” said Cottia, enthusiastically. “Really? May I come and look? And you’ll have to tell Esca; he’ll be interested.”

“Why? He’s studying Roman Britain, not Roman sculpture.”

“Oh, he’ll be interested, that’s all. Mosaics as well as sculpture? I’ll bet some of them are erotic.”

“You have erotic on the brain,” grumbled Marcus, flopping back down onto the bed and shoving cushions behind his head. “Not all of us are as fascinated by man’s lower instincts as you are.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Marcus,” Cottia said dryly. “Everybody’s interested in them, except _you_. But to get back to the point, the Romans produced a huge amount of erotica, not to mention utter smut. Did you know that in Pompeii there’s a sculpture of Pan having sex with a _goat_?”

“Nice,” said Marcus grimacing. “Just the sort of thing I’d expect you to know. Sorry to say, we won’t be packing anything at the warehouse. Every object’s to be crated on site, at the collector’s home. He has one of those grand places with a lot of land, and I suppose we’ll have to drive out there every day, to take dimensions. Would you like to come along? We’ll let you measure all the phallic symbols. God, I’m famished. Shall we go downstairs and have some tea? Sassticca’s been baking honeycakes all morning, so we can gorge ourselves.”

“Talking about phalluses—phalli?—makes you hungry, does it?” Cottia asked sweetly. “Well, I always did wonder if you swing both ways.”

She half expected Marcus to fling another cushion at her face, but instead he simply laughed. “I’d show you the steamy pictures, but I tore the memory card out of the camera, and burned it last week.”

“You’re joking.”

“Of course I’m joking,” said Marcus, sitting up again with an exasperated look. “Now, what about those cakes?”

“Don’t forget to leave some for Esca,” Cottia murmured, unfolding herself from Marcus’s chair. “He’ll be home for the summer, tomorrow, and you know how much he likes them.”

Marcus’s only reply was a muffled grunt, which did not bode well for Esca’s share of the honeycakes. As he rolled off his bed and headed for the door, Cottia sighed and fell into step behind him, noticing as she did so that his limp, today, was virtually imperceptible. Perhaps that was because it hadn’t rained in days. It was absurd, really, that he didn’t have a girlfriend. So many of her old school chums would have thrown themselves into his bed at a moment’s notice.  What with that impressive, beautifully toned physique, that sultry, sinfully full-lipped mouth, those narrow eyes—green, no less!—fringed with silky, dark lashes. What a fine figure of a bloke he was! A pity, almost, that she didn’t fancy him herself.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“It’s the Hartley-Dryden Collection,” Uncle Aquila said resignedly, sitting down behind his vast mahogany desk and shuffling through a folder filled with papers. “You’ve heard of it, I daresay. It’s extensive and covers both Republican and Imperial Rome; they lend to museums every year. This is their first time sending anything to the States, though.”

“Oh?” said Marcus, squinting at the sheaf of photographs his uncle had just handed him. “They’re _big_. And the marbles will be heavy; we’ll need to design special crates. How many, exactly?”

“Ten sculptures in marble, several with old damage and restoration work. Roughly twenty pieces of metalwork, including bronze sculptures, of various sizes. Six mosaics. A few pieces in mixed media. The packing will be a nightmare. Stefano is driving to the house next week, to begin measuring. You’ll go with him. The bad thing is that we’re short-handed. We never did replace Alfred, after he left to pursue an _acting_ career.” Uncle Aquila snorted with mild derision. “I’ve been mulling things over with Frank.”

Francesco Calleva was senior partner in the business, but he had recently moved, on a temporary basis, to New York, where he could oversee the fledgling American branch of the company.

“And?” Marcus asked politely, although half his mind was on the dinner party he was meant to attend that evening. One of his old friends from the States was in town, and they were going to meet at a new Thai restaurant. Felix was bringing two of his own mates with him, and possibly some girls…and Marcus acknowledged to himself that this information left him decidedly unenthusiastic.

“You won’t like this bit,” Uncle Aquila said now, with a rueful grin. “Frank’s sending his New York Operations Manager over here, to get his feet wet, so to speak. He has experience with handling the legal aspect of things, you know, when it comes to import-export of valuable objects…but doesn’t know much about measuring art, building crates, using conservation-friendly, acid-free materials, and so on.”

“So what won’t I like?” Marcus inquired, raising an eyebrow. “The Operations Manager, or the fact that we’ll be babysitting him.”

“It’s Servius,” replied Uncle Aquila, and Marcus could tell that he was doing his best not to laugh at his nephew’s discomfiture. “Servius Placidus. Frank wanted to promote someone from in-house. So he picked him.”

“Not _Placidus_ ,” groaned Marcus in despairing voice, pounding the desktop with mock fury as his uncle stifled a guffaw with an effort. “The man’s a total ass. And why does Frank always have to hire people with Roman-sounding names, anyway. It’s a genuine fetish, with him.”

“It made him very well-disposed towards hiring _you_ ,” his uncle said calmly. “Although I doubt he had any objection, when I put you forward for the job. Now. As I was saying. About being short-handed—“

“Don’t tell me,” muttered Marcus, fiddling absently with the dictionary on his uncle’s desk. “We’re to put an ad in the newspapers. _‘Wanted: big, strong men with Roman names. No Gauls and Britons need apply.’_ ”

“That would go over exceedingly well,” said Uncle Aquila dryly. “As we’re in the middle of London, which just happens to be swarming with British people. No, I was thinking that we’d hire Esca—just for the summer, you know, as he’ll be returning to his studies come autumn.”

There was a brief pause, and then Marcus said, “You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? He’s perfect for it. Intelligent, hard-working, knows something about the business.”

“His _cognomen_ ’s all wrong,” Marcus stated heavily. “MacCunoval isn’t even vaguely Roman. What will Frank say?”

“Marcus,” murmured Uncle Aquila, raising a bushy white eyebrow.

“Okay, okay, I’ll be serious. He’s never handled antiquities before.”

“I’ll be putting him directly under your supervision,” his uncle replied. “You can show him how. One needs to be careful, of course, but it’s hardly rocket science.”

“Um,” said Marcus, frowning.

“Well, it’s already a done deal, as you Americans say. I sent him an email this morning, offering him the position, and he’s replied in the affirmative.”

Uncle Aquila clasped his huge, gnarled hands together and gave a satisfied smile, completely ignoring his nephew’s look of dismay.

“I should have been consulted,” Marcus managed to say, wondering, even as he spoke, why he should feel so fucking panicked by this information.

“Well…you weren’t,” replied his uncle serenely. “Never fear; you can keep an eye on him until he gets used to things. Now, then. Here are the specs on the Hartley-Dryden Collection. When Esca arrives tomorrow, would you mind running over this material with him? I really don’t think I’ll have the time. And tell Stefano that the both of you will be driving out to the house with him, next week.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Much to Marcus’s relief, the measuring of the Roman sculptures, including two portrait busts and several complete figures, metalworks, and mosaics, went smoothly, leaving him ample time to custom design the cases and crates that would carry them all to New York. This was not to say that measuring the objects hadn’t been tricky—constructing supports for the interiors of the cases depended on the precision of the measurements taken—but Esca, smaller and slimmer than other members of the Calleva crew, had been amenable to crawling about on the floor, measuring tape in hand, to make certain that their notes would be accurate. They had needed to stay late at the Hartley-Dryden residence for two nights running, munching on dry sandwiches at well past eight o’clock, as Stefano complained about not being eligible for overtime pay, and Esca joked about slave labor.

“Just take a few photographs,” Marcus ordered on the second night, handing the camera to Esca. “From underneath that bronze tripod, so I can see how its legs are fastened.”

“You don’t mind lying on your back in the dust again, do you Esca?” Dru said jovially from the top of a ladder. “God knows I can’t do it…arthritis, you know.”

“More slave labor,” said Esca dolefully, but his eyes were dancing and he never really complained, in spite of the grueling work schedule (twenty minutes for lunch), and a less than comfortable ride to and from the site, crammed into the back of the company mini bus with the others.

“Oh, Esca won’t mind lying in the dust,” Marcus murmured. “It won’t make any difference to what he’s wearing.”

The week before the Calleva crew began their measuring and photographing of objects at the Hartley-Dryden home, Esca had shown up for his first day of work wearing white-rimmed sunglasses, baggy greyish jeans that had laddered over both knees, and a plain white tee shirt beneath a tight-fitting sweater vest that appeared to be shedding olive-green, blue, and violet threads. His wardrobe had improved little over the days that followed, and his colleagues either had grown accustomed to its awfulness or were finding it to be an entertaining conversation topic.

“You’d think people this wealthy would bother to have the floors of their storage rooms dusted every so often,” Marcus continued, highly diverted and amused by the sight of Esca with dust balls clinging to his russet brown hair and to the back of his oversized, shapeless red sweatshirt. A smudge of dirt followed the line of one cheekbone, another ran the length of his sharply defined jaw, and Marcus was shocked to find that he was actually imagining what it would be like to wipe them both off with the moistened pad of his thumb.

This would not do. It simply _would not do_. It wasn’t that the desire to touch another man horrified him; far from it. He had had some physical experience with men during his short-lived military career, although the majority of his sexual partners had been women. He knew enough to realize that he was bisexual, and this did not really distress him. But _Esca_ …?

He had known him since he was practically a kid. Wasn’t this like experiencing sudden lust for a _stepbrother_ , of sorts?

“At least, after today we won’t need to come back until we actually pack the bloody things,” Dru was saying in a manner that was meant to be reassuring. “We’ll let our commanding officer—that’s you, Acky—work his magic, and then build the crates according to his design.”

Dru—as Lotario Desiderio Salinatore was known to the rest of the staff—was older than Marcus by nearly ten years and had been with the crew, as senior packer, for what seemed like forever. However, any objections he might have had to being placed under the leadership of the senior Aquila’s serious, self-disciplined nephew, had been dispelled by Marcus’ even-handed behavior and genuine, if faintly reserved, air of friendliness. The two got on well, to the vast relief of the crew, with no trace of envy or doubt on the part of the more seasoned member of the company.

The dynamic between Marcus and young Esca, on the other hand, was such that nobody in the London branch of Calleva Fine Arts could fail to notice it. Their interaction was marked by an element of familiarity, tempered by wariness, and because they were both competitive by nature, they turned every project and task into a form of contest—whether they were taking turns to photograph problematic areas of a sculpture, or running to and from their mini bus with various supplies. However, what had started out as amusing was becoming frustrating, what with the odd sensation that came over Marcus every time he focused attention on Calleva’s newest recruit. It was perhaps fortunate for Marcus’s peace of mind that Esca was only engaged in the measuring and packing, and not the actual designing of crates and cases, which was his responsibility alone. Marcus had always had good hands and a good eye; as a boy he had carved small wooden figurines for fun, and had worn one of them, an eagle with wings spread wide, around his neck on a leather thong. He hadn’t worn it in years, of course, but it still sat on his bedside table as a reminder of his childhood with his parents in the States: perfectly balanced, feathers carved in high relief, neatly shaped, and elegant. The crates he designed and constructed for Calleva’s clients—who needed to move delicate objects, like Japanese porcelains from Burghley House, or large, heavy, and bulky pieces, like the female nude sculptures by Botero from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in the States—reflected the same precise and careful touch. Back in his office in London, he would be able to work out his designs in peaceful solitude, without having to encounter a pair of narrowed grey-blue eyes, blazing with concentration and competitive spirit, every time he raised his head.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Roman art the Calleva crew was measuring and photographing so diligently might belong to the Hartley-Drydens, but the patriarch of the clan had told the Metropolitan Museum that they wished the owner identification line on the exhibition labels to read simply, “Loaned from a Private Collection.” For this reason, the Calleva staff referred to the various Hartley-Drydens as the Anonymous Family. There was Old Man Anonymous, the patriarch, who emerged from his oak-lined study only to issue orders or demand his lunch. Then there were Mr Anonymous (his son), a bluff, hearty man with a brick-red complexion and the body of an aging athlete, Mrs Anonymous (“The classic trophy wife,” sniffed Stefano), and a teenaged Miss Anonymous, a sultry-eyed, voluptuous version of her blonde, model-thin mother.

Miss Anonymous had already slid her eyes in Marcus’s direction, and she didn’t appear to be dissatisfied with Esca’s appearance, either. She wore very tight, very low-cut shirts, out of which one or the other of her breasts was always threatening to explode, and was in the habit of leaning forward whenever the opportunity to do so presented itself.

“She wants a sandwich,” whispered Stefano, after Miss Anonymous stopped to talk to the packers for the third time in one day, to ask if any of them would like a can of pop, or perhaps a lager.

“A sandwich?” Marcus asked, clueless, and several of the men rolled their eyes.

“Ay, a sandwich, you know…herself in the middle, like, and you and MacCunoval on either side.”

The other men roared with laughter, as Marcus grinned good-naturedly, although the idea of such a thing was threatening to make him blush. He elbowed Esca—who had adopted an expression mingling boredom and disgust—in the ribs.

“Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” Dru went on, chuckling. “Even though Acky here isn’t repulsive to look at, and young Esca’s rather pretty. A girl like her ought to be looking for _maturity_ in a man. We older fellows know what we’re doing, I should think. Not Louie, though,” he added, jerking his chin in the direction of one of his colleagues. “He bats for the other team.”

“Get stuffed, Dru,” Louie shouted back amiably, and Dru subsided, grinning.

They were measuring one of the last of the works of art, an exquisite ivory plaque with carving in high relief, depicting Hercules and a lion that Esca said looked more like an overfed house cat than a king of beasts. This piece, however, presented a problem, in that a special license would have to be obtained before it could be taken out of the country.

“That’s because of the ivory poaching that’s still going on in wildlife preserves,” Marcus explained. “We have to prove that this isn’t something we just bought from a smuggler, and that the ivory’s really thousands of years old.”

“But that’s a _good_ thing, isn’t it?” said Esca, a little puzzled by the gloomy faces surrounding him.

“It’s a good thing, yes,” Marcus replied. “But a pain in the ass as far as paperwork and scheduling are concerned. It means we have to apply for a CITES license--which means waiting forever for a response. And we’ll need to file documents with the Department of Fish and Wildlife in the States.”

There was a chorus of groans from the Calleva staff, and Esca raised his eyebrows.

“In other words,” he said calmly, “you’d like _me_ to fill out all the forms. Okay, Marcus, that’s cool, I guess I’m here to do the boring stuff and pain-in-the-arse work. What’s CITES, anyway?”

“Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna,” murmured Dru, scrubbing at his nose with frustration. “And yeah, Esca, it is a _good_ thing, I approve and all that, but it’s absolute hell when it comes to writing letters of verification, and getting specialists to swear that this ivory is _old_ , and part of an ancient artifact, and that _you_ haven’t been out shooting elephants for fun and profit.”

“Why,” said Esca, looking down his high-bridged nose, “would I do anything so revolting?”

“Not you, specifically,” replied Dru, rolling his eyes. “I was speaking in generalities.”

“Thanks, Dru,” Marcus said, smiling. “For educating our young newcomer. He’s working towards his doctorate at Cambridge, boys, so we should expect him to be a little dense…I mean, thick, whatever you call it over here.”

Esca shot Marcus a look from beneath his dark bronze eyelashes, but said nothing, and then suddenly, and unexpectedly, he laughed. It was a genuine laugh that made it quite clear that Esca MacCunoval didn’t mind being the occasional butt of Marcus’s wry comments, because he knew there was no maliciousness behind them.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

During their second week on the Hartley-Dryden collection, the Calleva crew moved back to their warehouse, much to the disappointment of the aggressive Miss Hartley-Dryden.

“You were lucky to escape with a whole skin,” Esca whispered to Marcus as they left the collector’s manor house on their final day of on-site work. “I think Miss Anonymous wanted to add you to the sculpture collection.”

Marcus snorted. He had to admit that it was easier to converse with Esca now than it had been in the past. The young man who had always been somewhere _around_ Uncle Aquila’s house and garden, but never a real part of Marcus’s life, was becoming a colleague and almost, but not quite, a real friend. If only those peculiar feelings Esca had begun to arouse in him could be kept under wraps, they might actually…develop a _friendship_?

“What do you think?” Esca said, cocking his head to one side and surveying his supervisor in a critical manner. “A Marcus in bronze, or in marble? Clay might be best, but it’s so perishable.”

“In that case,” replied Marcus, poker-faced, “we’d better go with bronze. Hey…don’t forget, we’ve got to put the gloves and the acid-free cardboard back in the van. Jeez, it’s going to rain.”

“Toga or armor? Clothed or not?”

“What?” said Marcus, looking up at the heavy grey clouds massing overhead. “You’re a fine one to talk about clothes. Come on, Esca. Let’s get the supplies in the van!”

“Armor would be my choice for you,” Esca responded, hoisting a pile of acid-free boards into the back of the vehicle. “Don’t fancy yourself in a cuirass and greaves, then?”

“In a _what_!” said Marcus, frowning as he struggled with one of the mini bus’s double doors. “If it were up to Miss Anonymous, it would be a group sculpture, in the Graeco-Roman mode, and the lot of us would be naked.”

“You, perhaps,” Esca murmured, rubbing his eyes with fatigue. “I don’t look anything like a muscle-bound, knuckleheaded Roman general, with my kit off.”

_Oh, by the gods…Esca with his kit off._

"Cottia says I look like every sculptor's ideal of a Roman cohort commander," Marcus said, lowering his eyes modestly.

"Great," replied Esca, rolling his own. "Is that so, Centurion? We'll just package you up in one of our crates, shall we, and ship you to New York. You don't mind flying in the cargo section, I hope?"

“Very funny,” Marcus muttered. “Let’s get back to work, shall we?”

“Yes, _dominus_ ,” said Esca with a long-suffering look. “As you wish. _Leve fit quod bene fertur onus_.”

“’Light is the load that is borne with good humor,’” Marcus translated, scowling. “Shut up, you.”

There was a violent roar of thunder, and seconds later it began to rain.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

There was a mad scramble to get everything into the mini bus—the acid-free tissue in particular, as the rain would turn it into a sodden, pulpy mess in next to no time. Once everything was loaded onto the plastic tarp that had been spread out in case of just such a rainstorm, the Calleva crew, in varying states of dampness, climbed in and found places to sit. Esca was the last, having been jostled cheerfully out of the way by Dru, and when he clambered into the back seat, pulling the side door shut, behind him, he was soaked to the skin.

“Oi, Esca,” protested Stefano, shoving over to make room. “You’re dripping all over me.”

“Sorry,” replied Esca, shifting uncomfortably. “Can’t be helped.” Water was running from his hair and his tee shirt was dripping onto the seat. “Look, I’ll take the bloody thing off. It’s warm enough in here.”

He reached behind his head and pulled the wet cotton garment off in a single, fluid movement. Two or three of the men gave fake wolf whistles as the young man’s slim upper body was revealed. Esca grinned and shrugged his shoulders, but Marcus, who only moments before had been thinking that Esca’s clothing was actually quite acceptable today—plain, undamaged jeans and a plain, vee-necked, dark blue tee—lowered his eyes so as not to appear to be staring.

He had known Esca for years, hadn’t he? Although he had seen very little of him until quite recently; at first he had been in the States for most of the year, then had come the army, and when he relocated to London with his injured leg and his bruised spirit, Esca had been away at Cambridge, returning to the city only on the occasional holiday. And now, they were working together—that is, Esca was working for him—and they had spent more time together in the past week than Marcus could remember spending with him during any of the time before.

And Esca had grown up, and grown up nicely. He wasn’t big and tall and classically handsome; he was still slender, but the slimness now was lithe, firmly muscled, and elegantly proportioned. His face was still planes and angles, his high-bridged nose was more prominent, now that the softness of childhood was gone from his cheeks and jaw, but Marcus didn’t think he had ever seen a combination of features as arresting and oddly harmonious. And those keen, slate-blue eyes beneath straight brows, and that mouth…narrow lipped and uncompromising, but such a tender pink, and somehow so inviting when he smiled.

He remembered how he had fantasized about Bradley the golden quarterback, from his high school football team. How he had imagined what it would be like to touch him, perhaps even kiss him. In his most erotic teenage daydreams, there had been the thought of reaching between his legs, or even—and this had always made him go crimson with a mixture of shame and excitement—taking him into his mouth and swallowing him down to the root. Now his brain teased him with images of what it might be like to do that to Esca MacCunoval. He imagined his hands stroking that hair, silky bronzed brown with blond lights in it, moving across the smoothness of that finely modeled chest, taut, sleekly muscled thighs. He imagined (although this was more difficult) those piercing grey-blue eyes gone all soft and unfocused with exhaustion and desire).

Aloud, he said only, “Esca, if you get that tissue wet, you’re paying for it. Dru, switch places with Mr MacCunoval, would you? If we’re lucky, this will be over by the time we reach London, and we can offload everything into the warehouse with impunity.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

“You weren’t far wrong, Cotts,” Marcus remarked as he and Cottia sat in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Hmmmm?” was the reply, as Cottia examined the small pile of color images Marcus had just extricated from his portable printer. “What wasn’t I wrong about?”

“The Hartley-Dryden collection is teeming with erotic motifs,” muttered Marcus, picking through the prints until he found the one he wanted. “Just look at this.”

It was a bronze tripod, holding aloft a bowl, perhaps meant to serve as an oil lamp. The three legs were each in the shape of a young, standing satyr, complete with little, pointed beards, narrow, hairless torsos, shaggy goat legs ending in crisply modeled hooves, and jaunty erections.

“Oh,” said Cottia, impressed. “They’re, um, magnificent. Anything else?”

Marcus handed her another printout. “There are several, but I suppose you’ll like this one.”

The photograph showed a mosaic, rich with colors in glass paste, depicting a young woman being pursued by a male figure—another satyr?—sporting a long, pole-like phallus that jutted out before him like a fireman’s hose.

“Good lord,” murmured Cottia, faintly. “That’s enough to send any girl into a nunnery in a fit of abject terror. His thing must be as long as his arm.”

“Uhuh,” said Esca, who had suddenly materialized in the doorway, clutching a basket filled with tomatoes. “You’re showing Cottia _porn_?” 

“Cottia’s the enthusiast, not me,” Marcus muttered. “And you can’t call this porn, because it’s all ancient.”

“Ancient porn,” said Esca shrugging. “Did you know that people once thought tomatoes had aphrodisiacal qualities?”

Marcus pointedly ignored this statement.  “Are all of those ours?” he asked instead, focusing on the basket.

“You can tell your uncle that planting tomatoes in containers and then putting the containers in the garden, once it gets warm, actually worked,” Esca said, depositing the basket on the table with a thud. “He’ll be thrilled. Now Sassticca can make spaghetti marinara to her heart’s content.”

“We’re going out tonight,” Cottia announced, inspecting the tomatoes. “Me, Annie, Juliet, and the O’Neill twins. Jules might bring Rupert with her, but we’ll need some other men to dance with. Well, MacCunoval?”

“Okay,” said Esca, sitting down and wiping his forehead with the back of one hand. “If I can get a nap in before dinner. What about asking him, then?”

He jerked a thumb in Marcus’s direction.

“He’s hopeless,” Cottia grumbled, shaking her head. “Anti-social bastard.” The kettle gave a shrill whistle, and she leapt to her feet to deal with it.

“I am hardly anti-social,” protested Marcus, standing up and hunting in a kitchen cabinet for packets of tea. “I have some figures to go over this evening…and Placidus arrives tomorrow.”

Esca, who had never met Servius Placidus, looked unimpressed, but Cottia who had heard any number of complaints from Marcus, grinned evilly.

“After a week or so of him,” she said to Marcus, “you’ll be yearning to come out with us and get completely pickled. What’s he here for, anyway?”

“For some first-hand experience with the hands-on end of Calleva’s business,” Marcus replied. “Frank chose him to be Operations Manager of the branch in New York, more’s the pity. Well…are you staying for dinner, Cottia?  Perhaps you could help Esca wash those tomatoes before Sassticca comes back from her marketing. Esca…if you’re going out clubbing tonight with this wayward wench, don’t forget you’re to be at the warehouse by nine tomorrow.”

Cottia and Esca exchanged glances. “Yes, _dominus_ ,” said Esca, meekly, and they both cackled heartily with mirth.

“Will you stop?” snapped Marcus, frowning as he looked them both over. Esca, he noticed, was wearing the same outfit he had worn during the rainstorm in Somerset, narrow, unperforated jeans, and a vee-necked, dark blue tee shirt. It suited him; he might not be tall, but his litheness, and those close-fitting jeans, gave him a long, lean line. This simple, unpretentious ensemble was a vast improvement over the garments he had been accustomed to seeing Esca wear earlier that year.

Esca must have noticed him looking, because the corner of his mouth twitched a little. “I got tired of the disapproving stares. Is this visually unoffensive, do you think?”

He spread his arms wide, offering himself to Marcus’s stare.

Marcus turned away and made an effort to look unconcerned. “It’s much better than your usual.” Esca was gazing at him wide-eyed, with an expression of deliberately cherubic innocence on his pale, boyish face with its wide, high brow and angled jaw, and after a moment Marcus found it impossible to keep a straight face.

“Oh, all right,” he said, smiling reluctantly. “It’s a genuine upgrade. Thank the gods you lost the ribbon belt and the hairy vest thing. You actually look moderately…” Moderately what? Attractive? Appealing? Hot? The right words wouldn’t come, and Marcus covered his uncertainty with a massive yawn as he sat down again.

As was always the case, this proved contagious; Esca yawned also, stretching his arms above his head, tee shirt riding up above his hips so that the barest sliver of milky skin showed. Marcus’s lips tightened; he remembered Esca shirtless in the back of the van, his chest and tight, flat stomach the color of old ivory in the dimness of the vehicle, light from passing headlights catching in the narrow, almost imperceptible line of pale bronze-gold fuzz that trailed from below his navel to the low-riding waistband of his jeans.

He couldn’t help it; the memory brought a flush to his cheeks, and he could feel a sudden tenseness and tightening in his groin. Esca’s eyes met his and he gave an open-mouthed, cheeky grin, and then—to Marcus’s astonishment—those slate colored eyes traveled the length of his supervisor’s body with a cool self-assurance that took Marcus aback, even as it wreaked havoc with his senses.

Evidently Esca had grown up in more ways than one.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Servius Placidus was a tall young man of Marcus’s age, lanky and fit, sleek and well-groomed, but with a listless air of perpetual boredom, and a face that, but for a slightly crooked nose, could have been called pretty. He was Harvard-educated, from a wealthy Boston family, and—according to Stefano and Dru—had an even wealthier, older boyfriend with a high ranking job at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

Marcus, who had known him for perhaps two years, had worked with him on several occasions and heartily disliked him. The other men in the Calleva crew liked him even less.

“Why?” Esca asked Marcus after Placidus’s first day in the London warehouse as an observer, and Marcus’s lips had twisted in a rather sour grin.

“He’s an arrogant son-of-a-bitch,” he replied after a moment. “Looks down his crooked, aristo nose at most of the crew. At me, as well, although he only barely outranks me. Doesn’t care to get his own hands dirty, but loves to criticize everybody else. The men pretty much despise him.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with his being gay, does it?” Esca murmured. Marcus looked at him sharply, but Esca’s eyes were lowered demurely, his dark bronze lashes almost resting on his cheeks.

“No, of course not,” Marcus muttered, biting his lower lip. “The men…well, they make jokes, of course, but they know Louie’s gay, he makes no bones about it, and they all like _him_. Placidus is just…um, Placidus. A spoiled brat and monumental prat.”

Esca’s eyes were still half-closed, so Marcus took the opportunity to glance at his face again. He wondered about Esca, something he had never really done when he was younger, visiting Uncle Aquila in the summer, when Esca was little more than a boy. Yes, he wondered about him now, about his life outside of the Aquila home and Calleva Fine Arts, about his circle of friends, and, more than anything else, about his sexuality. Did he sleep with women? With men? Cottia said that Esca always found plenty of girls to dance with him at the clubs, and that he was well-liked by her friends, most of whom found him, as Cottia put it, “delicious, sexy, and good-looking in a wiry, off-beat way. All the girls think he’s adorable.”

  


 

But that look Esca had given him in the kitchen had been, unless Marcus was imagining things or was simply out of his head, not only friendly, but frankly inviting.

There had been no similarly inviting looks since then, but of course they had been working in the warehouse, surrounded by other members of the crew. Marcus was trying his best not to think about it, and anyway, there were various improvement schemes he was working on for the Calleva warehouse, and Placidus’s petulant moods to deal with, as it had more or less fallen to Marcus to keep things cordial between the packers, the technicians, and the new Operations Manager from the New York branch. The insufferable prat had already alienated most of the men with his coldly sarcastic comments about the music they liked to play on the warehouse sound system whilst they worked, and had embarrassed one of the drivers, a jolly fellow who resembled a young Santa Claus, by asking him how on earth he fit into the cab of any of the trucks.

“He isn’t doing much for Anglo-American relations, is he?” Esca joked one afternoon during their brief tea-or-coffee break.

It had only taken two days for Esca to realize why Placidus was so unpopular. He was notably efficient, knowledgeable about import-export laws, international trade, museum loan contracts, and wall-to-wall insurance coverage, but his disdainful manner and frequently supercilious comments had rubbed nearly everybody the wrong way. He had inquired of Marcus, in front of the entire crew, why an untrained young person like Mac…MacCracken?…MacConnell?…whatever, was allowed to handle objects dating to the first and second centuries AD. Was MacWhoever really suitable for this kind of work?

“He is entirely suitable,” Marcus had found himself saying coolly. “He’s a fine scholar—you can ask round his department at Cambridge—and my uncle will be happy to vouch for him.”

“Scholarship,” said Placidus, examining his fingernails with an air of faint amusement, “has nothing to do with handling works of art.”

“ _I’ll_ vouch for him then,” Marcus replied abruptly. “I’m perfectly comfortable giving Esca access to the Hartley-Dryden objects. I have every confidence in him.”

“Really,” murmured Placidus, meeting his colleague’s eyes with an expression that Marcus found himself unwilling to read.

“If he _damages_ anything,” Marcus said, between his teeth, “you can place the blame on me.”

Esca, who was standing only fifteen feet away, had blinked at this, but remained silent, saying nothing when Placidus passed him with a look that mingled doubt in his abilities with a distinctly carnal interest in his physical attributes. The visiting Operations Manager let his lubricious gaze slide over the dips, hollows, and sinuous lines of Esca’s lean body, from head to foot, far more suggestively and lingeringly than Esca had done when he gazed at Marcus in the Aquila kitchen. Esca’s eyes had widened a little at Placidus’s move, but he had made no response, and Marcus had found himself wishing he could flatten Servius Placidus with a well aimed blow to that long and already off-kilter nose.

“He really does seem to think that one of us might yield to his slimy charms and offer him a ride,” murmured Esca, now, as they gulped hastily at their scalding coffee. It was several days since Marcus’s defense of Esca’s inclusion in the Calleva work crew, and Placidus had said nothing more about it, although he continued to favor the young man with looks that were anything but subtle.

“Not one of us,” said Marcus, scowling. “You. I don’t think he has any interest in me, and he’s never thought much of the other men…even Louie.”

“He assumes I’m batting for the same team as himself, then?”

“I suppose he, well, it’s his ego; he thinks you might be, uh, not that it’s any of my business what you do, or with whom, but—“ 

"I've sampled the wares on both sides of the aisle, if that's what you mean," Esca replied flippantly.

_Oh._

__"That's cool," said Marcus, shrugging as he attempted to suppress the jolt of his suddenly racing pulse. "As long as you aren’t planning to shag Placidus."

Esca cast his eyes toward the ceiling and mimed being sick into his coffee.

He was still making vague vomiting noises, and Marcus was chuckling in spite of himself, when the subject of their conversation sauntered into the room.

“Well, boys—er, gentlemen,” said Servius Placidus languidly, looking from one to the other. “Is the workload so light that you can sit about chatting and making odd sounds into your coffee mugs?”

“We’re on break,” said Marcus coolly, setting his mug on the worktable. “We’re allowed, you know.”

“Ah yes,” sighed Placidus, just as coolly, brushing imaginary lint from the sleeve of his impeccably pressed shirt. “Break. How delightful. When you’ve finished your _break_ , gentlemen, perhaps you could be imposed upon to go over these specs with me.”

“Perhaps you could be arsed to ask nicely,” Esca muttered. He hadn’t meant for the Ops Manager to hear, but Placidus had sharp ears, and he looked down his long nose at Esca the way an aristocratic ancient Roman—a member of the Patrician or Equestrian Order, with a house on the Palatine Hill—might have gazed at a lowly pleb, or perhaps a slave. A sexually available slave. Esca stared back at him with a blank expression, and when Placidus turned away, he raised an eyebrow and grinned at Marcus as though to share the moment of silent amusement at the Ops Manager’s expense.

Esca’s refusal to acknowledge any meaningful glances, or respond to them in any way, did not seem to faze Placidus enough to alter his general demeanor. His arrogance continued to set Marcus’s teeth on edge, but perhaps even more annoying to him during the week that followed was the unexpected appearance of the undeniably handsome Liathan Leprince. Lee, who announced that he wanted to see what sort of summer job his friend had landed, lounged in the warehouse doorway, surveying the packing crew, the technical and office staff, and Marcus with an air of weary superiority that was easily as irritating as Placidus’s haughtiness and poor manners.

It was a particularly busy day; several of the men were putting together the crates Marcus had designed, and were preparing the lining of foam core that would protect the works of art from the inevitable bouncing and jostling of air and truck transport. Radiohead was blaring on the sound system, to be replaced, after a while, by an assortment of hip-hop artists.

“Why is eet so loud in here?” Lee inquired, wrinkling his nose. “Thees is not a veree pleasant place for _le travail_.”

“Yeah, well,” Esca said, with an open, boyish grin that made Marcus shiver, “we’re a rough bunch.”

“ _Cela se voit_ ,” Liathan murmured, looking down the length of his elegant, aristocratic nose. “I do not know ‘ow you can stand thees noise.”

“It keeps everybody upbeat and focused,” Marcus drawled from behind one of the worktables. “You know. Awake.”

“I do not undairstand,” Liathan began, but Esca was tugging at his sleeve, jerking his head in the direction of the kitchen area.

“There’s at least one lager in the fridge, Lee,” he said quickly, and as he ushered his guest out of the vast, hanger-like warehouse space, his eyes met Marcus’s and, unmistakably, he _winked_.

He got Liathan to leave soon after, with promises to lunch with him over the next weekend. No doubt this was because he had no wish for his friend to offend the crew with whom he had developed cordial working relations. Marcus did not allow himself to think it could mean anything more.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Phase Two of the Hartley-Dryden Operation had been completed. All of the crates and cases, painstakingly built to Marcus’s specifications, had been painted a cheerful blue (“So we can spot them immediately in the cargo bay at Kennedy Airport!”) and lined up along one wall, ready to be driven to the owner’s estate. Uncle Aquila had inspected them himself, and pronounced them to be excellent. The Calleva staff were given the upcoming weekend plus the Monday off, and admonished to be ready to drive to the Hartley-Dryden residence first thing next morning.

“We’ll need to get an early start,” he said to his nephew, glowering at a roadmap in an attempt to find a route with less traffic and fewer intersections. “Once there, we pack—that will take two days—and drive everything back to the warehouse for one night. The next day, it’s off to Heathrow. You can pack your own things during the weekend; you haven’t forgotten you’re flying to New York as courier?”

No, Marcus had not forgotten, and yes, even though it was only Thursday, his luggage was already packed and in perfect order. And, to tell the truth, he was looking forward to seeing New York, which he hadn’t visited in years. There was one fly in the ointment, however…

“I’m sorry you have to fly with Servius,” Uncle Aquila said in a genuinely apologetic voice. “He needs to get back to New York, and besides, the Metropolitan Museum can’t send someone to Kennedy to meet you. Their Registrars are swamped with work on their upcoming Michelangelo show. You will definitely need to have somebody with you. You’ll stay at least a week, and both of you can represent Calleva at the exhibition’s opening party. You’ve packed one of your good suits, I trust? There’s no need to go black tie, but…”

“Yeah, I packed something appropriate,” mumbled Marcus, less than thrilled at the reminder that he would be stuck with Servius Placidus for a week or longer. Well, perhaps not; once the art had been delivered to the museum, there would be no need to spend time in Placidus’s company, until the opening party. “Are he and I getting to Heathrow in one of the trucks?”

“No, no, you’ll only need one truck for the art. You and Servius will follow the truck in a car…Esca can drive you.”

“Great,” sighed Marcus, praying that Placidus would not renew his attempts to get Esca’s attention during the ride. “I’ll tell him.”

As it turned out, there was no need to tell Esca anything, as it was Esca who announced to the entire crew, Friday morning, that Servius Placidus was in hospital with an extremely nasty case of the flu.

“He has a bad bronchial cough, as well,” Esca added, having taken the Ops Manager’s call when he phoned the warehouse from his hospital bed. “He’s not going anywhere.”

“No!” said Dru, involuntarily clapping a hand over his mouth and nose. “Does that mean we’ll all catch it? I wondered where he was yesterday.”

Placidus had vanished after lunch the day before, and nobody had given it much thought, assuming that he had some sort of social obligation to fulfill, or that he had rushed off to do last minute souvenir shopping before his return to the States. Stefano had said, in a loud stage whisper, that he had probably retired to an expensive hotel with an equally expensive rentboy, but Marcus had doubted that even a self-absorbed twit like Placidus could do anything so irresponsible—he was, after all, an efficient, if not likable, administrator. He was ashamed, as well, that news of Placidus’s illness made him feel something like relief that he would have to put up with the man’s high-handedness after all. It shouldn’t be too difficult to courier the Hartley-Dryden collection by himself.

The entire crew, minus Placidus, left the warehouse on Friday, after six. Uncle Aquila had departed earlier, and his nephew suspected that he was going to celebrate his three days of free time by reading a long treatise on the specifics of Roman siege warfare, or something along those lines. Most of the Calleva packing crew went off to the local pub to get happily drunk. And Marcus informed all and sundry that he was going to relax in his room that evening with a mountain of DVDs and a bottle of bourbon, and not return to the real world until the following afternoon.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Marcus was nearly halfway through the second Godfather movie, and had done justice to a fair amount of bourbon, when there was a knock on his bedroom door. Marcus got to his feet with an effort and went to open it, only to find Esca on the other side.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Esca murmured, peering around the solid barrier of Marcus’s body to see what he was watching. “C’n I come in for a moment? Need to talk to you.”

“Oh,” said Marcus, a little groggily. Well…at least he wasn’t drunk, just tired. “Sure thing. Make yourself comfortable.” He gestured in the general direction of an armchair. “To what do I owe the pleasure? I thought you’d be out at some club with Cottia and her friends.”

There was a popping sound from the television as young Vito Corleone shot the villainous Don Fanucci several times, and the white-suited gangster collapsed to the floor. Both Marcus and Esca watched as Vito made his way to his wife and children, and took his infant son Michael—the future Al Pacino—in his arms.

“Michael,” said Esca, in tandem with Robert DeNiro. “ _Tu patri ti vuole ben’assai, ben’assai_.”

“What?” said Marcus, perplexed. “You _memorized_ the dialogue? What kind of Italian is that?”

“It’s Sicilian,” Esca replied casually, sitting down. “Quite a bit different from classic, Northern Italian, Signor Aquila.”

“You speak _Sicilian_ too?” Marcus said, squinting at the television screen and then eyeing Esca. “You can’t tell me that has anything to do with Roman Britain.”

“It doesn’t,” Esca answered, opening the top two buttons of his plain, blue shirt. His sleeves were already rolled up to the biceps. “A bit warm in here, isn’t it? Anyway, what I wanted to tell you—brace yourself, mate—is that I’m taking Placidus’s place on the flight to New York. Your uncle’s orders. You’ll need somebody to help you get the art from the airport to the museum, he says. Everybody else is committed elsewhere. So I’m it.”

Perhaps the bourbon had affected his brain, Marcus thought fuzzily, because he was at an absolute loss for words. He sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at his young colleague with perplexity.

“Sorry to disappoint, and all that,” Esca continued, his lips curling upward at the corners. “I know you were dying to be alone with Placidus in New York.”

“You shut up,” Marcus said, grinning and relieved to find that his voice still worked. “You’re the one he’s lusting after, idiot. Well, um, if you’re going to New York, you’d better pack your things before Tuesday.”

“Yes, boss,” said Esca in such a docile tone of voice that Marcus snorted.

“You won’t have any time to do it, otherwise. You’ll be too busy after Tuesday to do any shopping.”

“When’s the flight,” Esca asked, shifting forward in the chair. The gap in his partially unbutton shirt widened over pale, lightly flushed skin, and Marcus turned his eyes away, because Esca was actually…smoking hot, and he, Marcus, needed to fill a sink with ice-cold water and soak his head in it.

“Uh, the cargo flight’s Thursday,” he said, chewing at his lower lip. “Uncle Aquila figures the packing will take two days. You’d better see to it that the clothes you take with you are presentable. We have to make a decent impression on the staff at the Metropolitan Museum, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Esca murmured. “A pity I couldn’t borrow some of your tediously conservative garments.”

“They’d never fit you,” said Marcus, frowning. “We should go buy some things tomorrow.”

“We?” said Esca, raising both eyebrows. “I’m not going clothes shopping with _you_ , Marcus Aquila. That would be a disastrous experience.”

“I meant _you_ ,” snapped Marcus, nearly biting his tongue with chagrin. “Obviously I’m not going clothes shopping with you. Why should I subject myself to such torture? Just make certain you buy something stylish…do you own a suit, by the way? You’ll need one for the opening night.” The thought of Esca in one of his more typical outfits, standing in the midst of a formal-dress opening at the Metropolitan, suddenly made him smile.

“Did you know that you’ve got dimples?” Esca asked unexpectedly. “Dimples _and_ muscles, gosh darn, may the Loooord have mercy.”

“Esca,” said Marcus, with some forbearance. “Will you stop trying to sound like an American? We don’t really talk like that anyway, except in the movies.”

“Right,” Esca said in a noncommittal voice. “Do you think I could have a shot of that…I presume it’s whisky?”

“Maker’s Mark,” explained Marcus, shoving the bottle at his guest, along with a spare shot glass. “Bourbon, my friend. This is my last bottle; if we go through it, we’ll have to resort to Fighting Cock, which may not be quite as good.”

“Now there’s a name Placidus would approve of,” Esca mumbled, pouring himself a full shot and knocking it back with ease. “Speaking of cocks. Poor fellow must be resigned to lying flat in his hospital bed, daydreaming about feeling up the male orderlies.”

Marcus laughed so hard that his mouthful of bourbon went up his nose, but when he finally raised his head and wiped his streaming eyes, he found that Esca was looking him straight in the face with a little smile, his own eyes narrowed and surprisingly gentle.

“I told you I’ve sampled wares on both sides of the aisle,” Esca said quietly. “But I’m sure you realize that Placidus isn’t at all my style.”

“No,” Marcus replied without thinking. “I know that. I thought that maybe Liathan was.”

Esca’s smile quivered a little. “Lee? He’s a good person to drink with, party with, talk history with, practice my French with. But, to be honest, I really can’t imagine fucking him.” He registered Marcus’s expression of mild shock, and stopped grinning. “Oh, sorry, I meant, I can’t imagine _making love_ with him.”

His fingers had been playing with the third button on his shirt; now he unfastened it and leaned back, letting the shirt fall open to the middle of his chest.

Good God. Marcus felt his own fingers clench on the bedspread on either side of him, and he swallowed hard. Was Esca…was Esca…?

“I think,” said Esca, sitting upright again, “that you ought to give me another shot of that stuff.”

If the bourbon hadn’t yet gone to his head, it had certainly had an effect on his supervisor’s.

"Esca," Marcus blurted out suddenly. "I’ve always thought of myself as, well, sort of straight, or at the most bi. I mean, I’ve been with a couple of guys…in the army…I was drunk, you understand…but…but now I, uh, think I might be, um, gay. I mean. You know. Queer, whatever it is you Brits call it."

“You know perfectly well what we call it,” Esca remarked blandly. “You must be really drunk.”

“It isn’t that I couldn’t have it on with a girl if I wanted to,” Marcus blustered, a little desperately. “I’m quite capable of it. Thing is…these days I don’t seem to want to.”

There was a lengthy pause, and Marcus, who had taken another slug of bourbon, was only vaguely aware that his hands were shaking slightly.

"Really," said Esca calmly, with one of his typically inscrutable looks. "You like…men. And what brings you to this monumental conclusion, then?"

“S’not funny,” Marcus said, although Esca had shown no sign of laughing, or even smiling, at him. “Issa problem. Getting these feelings, I mean. In my, um. At the most imp…inorp…inopportune moments.”

This garbled statement was followed by another moment of silence.

"Well," murmured the impossible Esca, drawing his brows together. "It all depends. Who inspired these particular feelings in your...in you, anyway?"

"You," said Marcus flatly, and then stared at his shoes.

Esca looked at him in open astonishment for a long moment, and then his expression suddenly softened. He stood up and walked the few steps across the room to where Marcus was seated on the edge of his bed. Marcus felt the muscles of his stomach flutter, and before Esca reached him, he stood up also, and remained still as Esca reached up and tugged on his hair a little. He lowered his chin slightly, and Esca put his hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the mouth.

It was a very gentle, undemanding kiss; Esca’s lips were only slightly parted and his tongue barely skimmed the edge of Marcus’s upper lip. Then he drew away, resting his hands on his hips, and waited.

It took a moment for Marcus to find his voice again, and when he did, it was ragged and hoarse with what he knew was desire.

“Again,” he said quietly, and when Esca came to him, he put his arms around that narrow, flexible waist, pulled Esca against him, and kissed back. It was…Esca’s mobile mouth was warm and yielding even as he teased Marcus’s lips apart, and their tongues came together with a sudden intensity. Esca moaned faintly, and Marcus clenched his hands on Esca’s shirt, which had rucked up in the back, and felt his own pulse beating hard somewhere in his throat. When they were both panting for breath—one of Esca’s hands was pulling softly at a belt loop on his jeans—he stood back and looked his young colleague in the face.

“I’ve known you since you were a kid,” he finally said, unsteadily, touching his own mouth with his fingers. “I mean, you’ve been living here…how long? This isn’t like _incest_ , is it? Or, uh, ped…pedophilia?”

“Marcus,” said Esca patiently. “I’m twenty-three. I’m in no way connected to you by blood. And you’re not so much older than I am. Now would you please shut up and get on with it? Unless you’ve got cold feet, that is.”

“No, I haven’t,” was the reply, as Marcus began pulling his shirt over his head. “Are you sure you’re not drunk? I can’t, well, take advantage, you know.”

Esca groaned with exasperation and annoyance. “You’re not taking advantage—“ His voice faded into a murmur as Marcus finished tugging off his shirt, dropping it to the floor, unfastening his belt, and sliding his trousers down his legs. Within what seemed like seconds, he was unclothed but for his boxers, which he skimmed off quickly and without any fuss or posing. Naked, he was surprisingly trim at the waistline and hip, chest and shoulders broad and beautifully modeled, stomach toned and flat, the muscles in his arms and legs long and graceful, not bulky or ropy as one might have expected in an athletic man of his size. The jagged red scar on his leg was partially veiled by shadow, and his erection, bobbing slightly against his lower abdomen, looked dark against the pale olive of his skin.

"Oh my God, Marcus," Esca murmured involuntarily, trying not to gawk.

"Just don't...um, look at my leg, okay?" came the reply. Marcus was swaying slightly, but he was not drunk enough to stumble as he took a step toward Esca. "Now you."

"What? Oh," said Esca confusedly, suddenly remembering that he was still fully dressed.

“Come on, Esca,” Marcus said, sounding unexpectedly cheerful. “Strip! My turn to look.”

"There's nothing to see, really," Esca said, smiling slightly. He spoke modestly, but his eyes said otherwise. “And you’ve been so insistent about getting me into these clothes. Now you want to get me out of them?”

“ _Esca_ ,” Marcus muttered through gritted teeth.

“Right,” mumbled Esca, and Marcus could see that he was embarrassed to find himself blushing like a schoolgirl…like a _virginal_ schoolgirl, as he toed off his shoes and then fumbled with the last few buttons of his shirt. “Hang on a mo. These buttons—“

Marcus was a hand’s breadth away from him in seconds, large, well-shaped hands reaching out to deal with the buttons. He removed the shirt, sliding it back over Esca’s shoulders, and then reached for the fastening of his jeans. Esca was ahead of him, however, unbuttoning, unzipping, and then stepping out of the tight-fitting denim, pulling his shorts off with them, and Marcus moved back, wordlessly, to admire.

He was wordless for so long that Esca fidgeted slightly, and raised clouded grey-blue eyes to Marcus’ green ones.

“Well?” he whispered, but Marcus was still looking, studying, his eyes alight with honest appreciation.

Esca was slender, but hardly scrawny; he reminded Marcus of a thoroughbred colt, the slight, smooth curves of muscle and sinew covered by creamy skin. Marcus also noticed what he hadn’t seen in the dimness of the company mini bus, when Esca had pulled his shirt off. Narrow blue lines forming a design like a band, around Esca’s sleek right arm, a little above the elbow.

Marcus had to wet his lips before he could speak.

“When did you get that?” he stammered, pointing at the tattoo, and Esca grinned a little sheepishly.

“A friend did it for me, two years ago. I think…I think I was trying to look like an ancient Celt from, uh, Roman Britain. You don’t like it, I suppose.”

Whether Marcus did or did not like it didn’t seem to matter, as he stepped forward and yanked Esca into his embrace, taking the initiative for the first time since Esca had entered the room, lifting his chin and bringing their lips together.

He was a confident kisser; in this area, as with nearly everything he did, he had always striven for excellence. His mouth was firm and his tongue was carefully explorative, and although he nibbled a little, he neither bit harshly nor deluged Esca with saliva.

It was awkward getting to the bed, wrapped round each other as they were, but they managed, and Marcus was able to pull aside the bedclothes and ease them both onto the mattress. They were both trembling now, and when Esca flung his head back against the pillow, Marcus let his tongue run the length of his throat, from his chin down to the little dip between his collarbones, and then moved to his nipples, dark pink against the pallor of his chest.

“Hey,” said Esca, barely coherent as he squirmed under these ministrations. “I’m ticklish! If you tickle me on purpose, you great brute, I’m off.”

“Hah! You’re not going anywhere,” Marcus snapped. This was quite true; Marcus had rolled on top, and Esca was effectively pinned beneath his very solid and much larger body. All the same, Marcus was anything but rough; his kisses and caresses, as he familiarized himself with Esca’s throat and shoulders and slim, hard, milky-pale torso, were as gentle as if the wiry body he held in his arms was that of a young girl.

“Well, Marcus,” whispered Esca softly, twisting to the side and nipping lightly at his shoulder. “I thought you big, tough soldier types went for the target immediately. I didn’t think they bothered with _foreplay_.”

“Will you stop stereotyping me,” growled Marcus, shoving Esca onto his back once again and glaring down at him, propped up on his elbows. “Unless that’s what you want…a quick, no-frills fuck. Because I— _mmmr_.“

Esca had put a hand lightly over his mouth.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, putting his free hand on Marcus’ shoulder. “I’m sorry, Marcus. I’ll shut up…I keep on forgetting about your pride.” He saw a frown beginning to take shape on the handsome face above him, and slid both arms round Marcus’ neck. “I like you for it. For your pride, I mean. And your sense of honor. It’s not usual.”

“No?” murmured Marcus, sliding his hand down over Esca’s taut, flat stomach and taking his cock, pinkish brown and rock-solid, the skin like fine-textured silk, in a secure grip.

“No,” replied Esca with a little gasp, and pulled Marcus down to kiss, ravishing his mouth with his own lips and tongue and teeth until Marcus was in such a state of semi-delirium that he lost his grip on Esca’s erection. “But you can stop being so bloody _serious_.”

“I’ll show you serious,” Marcus whispered back fiercely, but apparently Esca had had enough banter for the night, because he simply arched upward, hips rotating slowly to provide a tantalizing, lingering friction, and his hands moved down Marcus’ back until they rested above the tight, hard curve of his buttocks.

After that, every rational thought was lost in heat and passion and frantic movement. They were both so tightly wound that it wasn’t possible to do much more than grind their bodies against each other; Marcus realized, dimly, that if he even attempted penetration, he would come instantly, and anyway, he didn’t have anything to prepare Esca with, no Vaseline, no gels or lubricants. And perhaps Esca didn’t even want _that_. The next time…the next time they would be able to take things gradually, to explore the possibilities, but just now they were far too…

Marcus caught his breath and came explosively, Esca’s breath echoing harshly in his ear. A moment later he heard Esca’s strangled cry as he released himself into Marcus’s fist, and they collapsed into a spent and quivering heap, Marcus’s arms and legs tangled up with Esca’s lean, pliant limbs, their palms pressed tightly against each other’s skin.

A while later, when their breathing had got back to normal, and they were nearly comatose with a kind of pleasurable, dreamy exhaustion, Esca brought his lips to Marcus’s ear.

“I’ve never forgotten,” he murmured, barely audible. “How you saved me, when I was twelve. Remember?”

“Please, Esca,” Marcus whispered back, half-jokingly. “You’re not going to tell me this was out of _gratitude_.”

Esca cuffed him lightly over the ear. “ _No_ , Marcus. I don’t believe in gratitude sex. But I think,” and he yawned sleepily, one hand reaching for Marcus’s. “I think that was when I first realized that I…that you…”   He yawned again, and was asleep so quickly that Marcus, as curious as he was, hadn’t the heart to wake him.


	4. Chapter 4

Stefano, Uncle Aquila’s right-hand man at Calleva Fine Arts, hailed from Palermo province, in Sicily. The Aquila family had been staunchly Rome-based, with a summer villa in the part of Tuscany that had belonged to ancient Etruria, for what in all likelihood had been centuries, before relocating to London. Consequently, there was a good-natured war between the two, with constant arguments about everything from food to scenery to historical monuments. Stefano praised the beauty of the Sicilian landscape and its wealth of important ruins, like the Greek temple complex at Agrigento, or the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina, and complained loudly about his employer’s “Northern snobbery,” whilst Uncle Aquila rolled his eyes and made jokes about the Mafia.

It was Stefano who handed Marcus and Esca their flight tickets as they boarded the mini bus on Tuesday morning, on their way to the first of their two-day packing session at the Hartley-Dryden residence. The crates had been loaded into the back of their largest truck, and piles of acid-free tissue, sheets of foam core, pieces of softer foam, and sturdy “belts” to hold the crates against the inner walls of the vehicle, had been carefully placed in cardboard bins large enough for a baby hippo to stand in.

“Piece of cake,” murmured Dru as he and one of the Calleva drivers eased themselves into the cab of the truck; the other staffers would follow behind, in the company mini bus. “The sculptures will be the most difficult things to pack, but those crates should hold them easily.”

“I think the mosaics will be the most fiddly,” retorted Stefano, climbing into the bus. “And those little bronze pieces are hardly a piece of cake, they’re so delicate. You mind those statuettes, Marcus, when you unpack them in New York.”

“Do we have to unpack the objects at the Met, as well?” Esca asked Marcus, and Marcus nodded.

“We do, although Registrars from the museum will be present, not to mention some Objects Conservators,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve done it before, though not with as many pieces as this.”

“Hmm,” said Esca, and yawned. It was all Marcus could do not to smile, although he himself had been yawning for most of the morning. It was still hard for him to believe that he and Esca had spent the better part of the weekend together, minus the hours Esca had spent hunting down new articles of clothing, and that a lot of that time had been spent in bed. Esca had woken him Saturday morning by turning over in his sleep and landing partly on top of him; the sudden, but entirely welcome, contact had brought him to alertness in seconds, and once Esca was properly conscious, they had had drowsy, fumbling, but highly satisfying sex.

Cottia had stopped by later in the morning, just before lunch, and it had been something of a struggle for them not to let anything slip. She had been so close to both of them for years; it was nearly impossible to hide their flushed cheeks and heated glances from her sharp golden eyes, although, fortunately, Cottia too looked tired, and was not her usual, highly observant self. (“Out clubbing last night, eh?” Marcus had asked, and Cottia had merely nodded and blushed.) Being on the DL in her presence was not going to be easy; Esca argued that they should simply tell her, but Marcus, faintly embarrassed, suggested that they wait. He had no desire to put up with what would almost certainly be arch and teasing comments on the part of their old friend. As affectionate, faithful, and well-meaning as Cottia might be, subtlety, of any kind, had never been her strong point.

That evening, having returned triumphantly from his shopping excursion, Esca had sat quietly through dinner with Marcus and Uncle Aquila and excused himself early, pleading the need to pack. Marcus waited for him quietly in his bedroom, television switched on without sound as the sole source of light. As he had anticipated, Esca appeared shortly after he heard Uncle Aquila’s door closed with its usual sharp click.

Marcus had stood silently and held out his arms; Esca walked into them, and turned his face up, already breathing fast. Marcus kissed him slowly and deeply, much as he had the night before, but with an added sense of accepted intimacy, after a while abandoning Esca’s lips to mouth softly along his sharp jawline, nibble the rim of an ear, taking his time. Keeping Esca occupied in this way, he had surreptitiously unfastened and unzipped his slim, new black jeans, and then taken him by surprise by pushing them down around his calves as he dropped to his knees, his face pressed against Esca’s hip and the top of his thigh.

Esca had clearly not expected this, and had given a strangled exclamation when Marcus’s lips closed round him. Marcus had worked him slowly, then rapidly, his tongue teasing and caressing the head, then the satiny skin of the shaft, with remarkable dexterity. Esca had stood transfixed, swaying slightly, his fingers curled into Marcus’s dark hair, until his eyes had rolled back and his hips pushed forward as he quaked and spent himself in Marcus’s mouth.

“Marcus… _oh_ …” was all he had seemed capable of saying, before taking hold of Marcus’s wrist and pulling him to the bed. Once there, he had practically torn off the remainder of his clothing and flung himself between the sheets, as Marcus undressed more slowly, letting Esca’s eyes wander his body as he dropped shirt, cotton gym trousers, and boxers to the floor.

“Esca,” Marcus whispered almost inaudibly as he knelt on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping beneath his weight, and peeled the top sheet gently back from Esca’s nakedness. There was no reply, but Esca turned his head, without lifting it, and one hand reached out to grasp Marcus’s.

To Marcus, Esca looked singularly beautiful in the flickering light of the television screen, his graceful, pliable limbs stretched out on the fine linen sheet, grey-blue eyes half-closed, tendrils of hair a dark, dark chestnut-bronze against the pillow in the dimness of the room. He had drawn Marcus to him with an almost feral passion, pulling away a while later to make a grab for his fallen jeans, reaching into a pocket to withdraw a foil-wrapped condom and a tube of something that flowed, cool and slippery, over Marcus’s fingers when he uncapped it.

“Bought that today,” Esca gasped out, giving Marcus a moment to deal with the condom before taking him by the wrist again and guiding his hand. Marcus had slipped first one, then two fingers in; it had been a while since he’d done this, and he was careful not to be clumsy, or too quick. And then, after considering the generous length and breadth of his achingly rigid cock, he worried about the likelihood of hurting Esca, and cautiously added a third finger.

“It’s alright, Marcus,” Esca had whispered. “You won’t hurt me…not really.” And then he hissed as Marcus, having withdrawn his fingers, slowly pushed into him, moving gradually until he was hilted, his own lower lip caught between his teeth as he resisted the urge to thrust harder. Esca was trembling beneath him, moisture standing in the corners of his eyes, but his hands were on Marcus’s hips, pulling him down, and when Marcus finally gave in to impulse and drew back, then slammed forward into the tightness and heat, he arched upward, wrapping his legs round Marcus’s waist as Marcus continued to pound him, muffling his cries—half whimpers, half moans—against his shoulder. Marcus’s own cry had been more like a victorious shout, into the downy warmth of the pillow, and in the blissfully drowsy aftermath that followed their nearly simultaneous climax, he nuzzled Esca’s rumpled, sweat-damp hair, pressed sleepy kisses to his eyelids and the bridge of his nose, and stroked him gently from shoulder to hip.

  


 

“You’ll let me do that to you,” Esca had murmured, half question, half statement, as he pulled the light, warm-weather duvet up over their shoulders and pressed his nose against Marcus’s jaw.

“Um,” said Marcus uncertainly, feeling himself flush.

“You’ve never…?”

“I’ve, well, never been on the receiving end of things,” Marcus confessed gruffly, clearing his throat. “But if you want…I’m perfectly willing to, er…”

“I’ll be gentle, Marcus,” Esca had whispered, and Marcus could sense his smile. “I promise.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

As the entire Calleva crew had suspected would be the case, Miss Anonymous (in a push-up bra under a filmy blouse) was at the front door the moment the truck, followed by the mini bus, pulled into the semicircular drive at the front of the house.

“Good morning, Miss H-D,” Dru sang out as he descended from the cab of the truck. “We’d love to stop and chat, but there’s a great hoard of objects to pack, so we’d better get to it, if you’d kindly open the door to storage and let the lot of us in, with the crates.”

“Brilliant,” Marcus complimented him, after they all piled past the disappointed Miss Anonymous, lugging crates behind on dollies, smaller ones piled on top of the larger containers. “Maybe she’ll even stay out of the room for the rest of the day. Miss H-D! That’s charming. It could be Miss Harley-Davidson, Miss Hard Drive, Miss High-Density.”

“Shhhh!” muttered Stefano warningly, looking back in the direction of the door. “Girl’s got ears like a rabbit and eyes like a hawk. Don’t alienate the client, for God’s sake.”

The packing went smoothly, thanks to the precision of last week’s measurements, and the care Marcus had taken with the interior design of the crates. Hollows and ledges, carved into the rectangles of flexible foam that supplemented the foam core lining, supported fragile limbs of sculptures and handles of wine vessels. The most difficult feat was the maneuvering of heavy marble sculptures into their snug nests of foam core and acid-free tissue. Two thirds of the works of art had been packed by the end of the day, when the crew stretched aching limbs and rotated sore shoulders before climbing into the van for the ride back to London. To everybody’s relief, Miss Anonymous had visited the storage room only once, and had left rather sulkily when neither Marcus nor Esca was able to spare more than a few words of greeting.

“We’ll finish early tomorrow,” Stefano said with satisfaction. “If we can drive the truck back to London early, with the art, we’ll miss the worst of the traffic.”

“Right. Excellent,” replied Marcus, rubbing his left shoulder with his right hand and wondering whether he was going to be in any kind of shape for what he wanted to do with Esca later on.

Perhaps because he wasn’t as large and ruggedly built as the other packers, Esca had not been given much to do when it came to the lifting of marble sculptures, and was more or less ache-and-bruise-free. That night, he slipped into Marcus’s bedroom armed with a bottle of light, faintly almond-scented oil, and an armful of towels, and proceeded to massage the soreness and tightness out of Marcus’s shoulders, arms, and legs. Marcus growled with mingled pain and relief, his body jerking only twice, once when Esca ran a slippery palm over the sensitive skin of his scarred left leg, and again when a finger, dripping with oil, hesitated close to the cleft of his buttocks.

“Not tonight, Esca,” he managed to say, and Esca laughed quietly.

“No, we won’t do _that_ tonight; you’re sore enough as it is,” he agreed, raising an eyebrow at the look on Marcus’s face. “I’m saving _that_ for when you’re at your best.”

“At my—“ Marcus began, a little indignantly, but Esca kissed him, pulled away, and went off to wash the oil from his hands. When he returned, he climbed into the bed and settled himself in the crook of Marcus’s arm, like a cat. There he lay quite still with surprising, uncharacteristic docility, letting Marcus stroke and explore him as he pleased, before wrapping his slender hand about both of them, sliding it up and down. Marcus curled his own hand round Esca’s, and tightened the pressure, moving faster as they both pushed into their viselike grip, until they both came lavishly, the hot wetness spilling between them and then trickling down their hands onto the towel Esca had thoughtfully left on the bed. For some reason, this made them both laugh, and they pressed their faces into the pillow so as not to roar with hilarity and—the gods forbid—wake Uncle Aquila.

Work the following day went even more smoothly than on the first—a good omen, Stefano mumbled—and the crates were loaded successfully into the truck, secured with belts, and the rear doors locked securely for the return to the warehouse. The Calleva crew received a crestfallen farewell from the Hartley-Dryden daughter, and a case of expensive whisky from her grateful father.

“Nobody drinks that until the job’s finished,” Marcus said with what he hoped sounded like authoritarian sternness as the crew piled back into the mini bus. He himself had volunteered to ride with the truck driver, so as to remain as close to the art as possible, until it was safely deposited in the warehouse. “And that means not until Esca and I have left for New York.”

“What about ours, then?” Esca asked, lips curving downward, and Marcus chuckled.

“We’ll bring a bottle with us,” he replied, his eyes on the narrow pink curve of Esca’s lower lip. “But we won’t drink it, either, until the art’s unpacked at the Metropolitan, and we have a week or so of freedom before the opening.”

Esca, who—miracle of miracles—was tastefully and simply dressed, faintly hipster-ish in his new, skinny jeans and trim white tee shirt, sleeves rolled partway to the shoulder,  rolled his eyes skyward with exasperation, and Marcus grinned. Moments later he caught a hint of speculation in Louie’s expression as he passed them, and made an effort to adopt his most serious, business-like demeanor.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

”No,” said Stefano in blank horror. The truck, with its precious cargo, had been backed into the warehouse, and the weary men were preparing to lock the building and leave. Dru had jumped into the back of the truck, to make certain that the crates were all secure, and had unfastened and lifted the smallest of them, to move it away from the doors. It was then that he realized that the crate was unusually light—too light—and used a screw gun to unfasten the hardware and open the lid. Then he lifted out the inner top of foam core and looked inside.

The crate was empty, but for a tissue-wrapped rectangle that, upon inspection, proved to be the notebook containing all of the object condition reports that would be handed to the museum curators upon arrival at the Met.

“Bloody fucking…” muttered Dru, lifting out the notebook and then glaring at the vacant, foam-core lined interior. “This is Crate Number Nine…what was in here?”

“The bloody gilded eagle,” snapped Stefano, his expression one of embarrassment and shame as he spun round to look at Marcus. “The eagle from some stupid, bloody Roman standard. I’m sorry, Marcus. I don’t know how this happened.”

Marcus had gone a little pale, but his face was calm. “It’s not your fault, Stefano. If anybody has to take the blame, it’s me. It’s I. I’m meant to be in charge of this entire operation.”

“You didn’t pack this crate, it wasn’t your error,” Stefano mumbled, looking at the floor. His ears had gone red, and Marcus dearly hoped he wasn’t about to weep.

“It’s not your fault,” Marcus repeated, woodenly, his mind casting about for some way to solve the mystery. “Dru, who was the last person to see the eagle, anyway?”

“I was, in all likelihood,” Dru replied, biting one of his knuckles in frustration. “Yesterday. We were putting the smaller objects in their foam core inner boxes, the ones that fit several to a crate. The eagle had its own inner box _and_ its own crate, and the damn thing was sitting on the padded table, waiting its turn for packing. I told Miss Hartley-Dryden she could have a last look at it, before we boxed it up.”

“Miss Anonymous?” groaned Stefano, pounding his fist into the palm of his other hand with anxiety and a combination of anger and sorrow. “Do you suppose that little bitch could have squirreled it away somewhere? Taken it out of the room? _Stolen_ it?”

“No, no, no, why would she do a thing like that?” Marcus murmured, casting an eye over the many crates lining the floor of the truck. “She may be a silly flirt, but I never got the impression that she’s malicious. Anyway, her father would wring her neck for something so stupid.”

“If she got found out, you mean,” Stefano said dolefully. “ _Madonna mia_.”

“Maybe she’s angry because neither the boss nor MacCunoval would give her the time of day,” Louie joked feebly. “I mean, she’s a horny little bint if I ever saw one.”

“No, ah come on, Louie, there’s no way,” Marcus said with a wry attempt at a smile. “Look, we double checked the Hartley-Dryden storage before we left. There wasn’t a thing left in that room, other than dust and Dru’s choc bar wrappers.” Dru snorted apologetically. “It has to be _here_. In one of the other crates. Mis-packed by accident. I’ll open every crate and go through the contents until I find it.”

Dru looked rather aghast. “That’ll take all night, at least. Just to open those crates, unfasten all of those screws, take out the inner boxes and inspect each one…Look, boss…Marcus. We’ll stay and help. If it’s here, well, we’ll bloody find it. Although, to be honest, if it’s in one of these crates, it’s taking the place of something else, and where will that something else be?”

Marcus expression had become stiff and unreadable, a habit left over from his military days, and he looked at Dru with a kind of eerie calm. “No, Dru, the men are exhausted, they’ve been lugging crates and statuary for the past two days. I’ll stay and look. It’s my responsibility anyway, and you know there isn’t room in the truck for more than a couple of people at one time, to maneuver around all of these crates. You men go home and get some dinner. I’ll ring you if I need help, or if… _when_ I find it.”

“But boss,” Dru began, looking from Marcus to Stefano, whose lower lip was beginning to quiver, and nose to run. “Let me, uh…”

“I’ll stay,” Marcus repeated. “If somebody would just run to the nearest fast food place, and grab me some fish and chips or something, I’ll be okay.”

“I’ll get the food,” Esca said in a low voice. “And then I’ll stay. You said a couple of people, Marcus. I can squeeze round those boxes in the back. One advantage to being on the small, thin side. Somebody rig up a light for the truck interior, and then we should be fine.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Nobody can say that our lives aren’t exciting,” Esca said in an attempt at humor. They had opened five crates, with no success. Marcus had suggested that they start with the smallest crates, as the eagle was not particularly large, and the biggest crates had been packed with multiple objects, each in its own foam core inner box. It was fortunate that the warehouse was temperature- and humidity-controlled, and very cool, although the interior of the truck was stuffy, even with the rear double doors wide open. Both Marcus and Esca were sweating and sticky, shirts clinging to their backs, as they wrestled with crate lids, hardware, and pulled mounds of crumpled, acid-free tissue from crate interiors.

“Only three of the small crates left to go,” Marcus gasped, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “And I’ve run out of swear words. Can you think of any in those arcane, useless languages you’ve studied?”

“Most of the languages I’ve studied are still in use, wise-arse,” Esca said, grinning tiredly. “They’re not exactly arcane. Would you pass me the water, please?”

“Just don’t spill it,” mumbled Marcus, handing over the bottle. “We have enough trouble here as it is.”

Esca gulped water furiously, and then set the bottle down, cap screwed on tightly. “Er, Marcus. What happens if we can’t find the eagle?”

Marcus paused for a moment, as he refastened a lid onto a crate. “I’ll be done for, at Calleva,” he replied quietly. “Even Uncle Aquila will be able to see that. If the eagle can’t be found, I suppose Calleva will be liable. For its value, that is. And we’ll all be sued, and the reputation of the company will be in the dust. Fucking ow!” he added, as he hit his thumb with the small hammer he had been using to tap the lid into place.

“What time is the flight, again?” Esca asked bleakly. “How much time do we have left?”

“I’ve forgotten,” Marcus said, stretching his aching arms. “Check your ticket. I believe it’s at noon, or shortly after. Of course, if we don’t find the eagle, you may be flying to New York with someone else.”

“We’ll find it,” said Esca fiercely, eyes narrowed in that doggedly determined look that Marcus had grown accustomed to seeing on a regular basis.

“If it’s here. Funny thing…if I were to be sacked…I’d miss this…all of this…Calleva, you know…”

“Really?” Esca asked curiously, almost forgetting that Marcus’s disgrace was a distinct possibility. “I didn’t know that you liked your job, in particular. I mean, last year, whenever I was in London, you always seemed so, well, out of sorts. _Removed_. Not especially happy or engaged in anything.”

“Hmmm,” said Marcus, frowning.

“At first I thought it was because of your, um, leg, uh, injury, or…” Esca went on, beginning to flounder verbally. “Anyway, I thought that, maybe, you really didn’t enjoy your work…”

“I like my job,” Marcus retorted automatically, and was startled to realize that this was true. During his first few months at Calleva Fine Arts, he had come to understand that he was well suited to his job there, got on well with the rest of the staff, and found the work a welcome respite from his battles with disappointment and the ever-looming threat of self-pity. Now, however, it struck him that his job at Calleva had become important to him for other reasons. It gave him the opportunity to think through the various problems it presented in a creative manner; he enjoyed the products that resulted from his designs, enjoyed the growing camaraderie with the crew. It made him happy to see that Uncle Aquila was proud of him, and impressed with his abilities. Esca was the icing on the cake, but so much more important to him than icing had any right to be.

In fact, he wasn’t icing at all, he was…

“Who exactly did pack Crate Number Nine?” Esca asked critically, wrinkling his brow.

“I’m not sure, Dru or Stefano, probably. _They_ may not even remember, they were working so fast. Why the hell did we decide to pack the eagle in its own crate? It’s compact enough to have gone into one of the large ones, in an inner box, like the smaller metalworks and ceramics.”

He had been thinking out loud, but at his words Esca raised his head, lifting his chin in the way he always did when he was excited, or angry, or defiant.

“That’s it, Marcus.”

“Um?” Marcus said absently, rubbing his bruised thumb. “What’s it?”

“Marcus. Where was that notebook of condition reports supposed to go?”

“The condition reports? Dru or Stefano usually carves out a space for the notebook in the foam padding inside one of the crates. It doesn’t get its own box. Certainly not its own crate.”

“That may be it, Marcus,” Esca said, a little tensely. “Which crate were the men going to put the reports in? Surely one of the large ones?”

Marcus, who had sat down on one of the smaller crates, stood up again and quickly read over the contents notes that had been handwritten onto each crate, as it was packed, with an indelible marker. He stopped at the largest crate, at the very back of the truck.

“This one has about ten pieces in it,” he murmured. “Mostly metal ornaments and figurines. But the note says CR. That has to be it.”

Esca handed him the screw gun, and within ten minutes the lid had been lifted off, and a protective layer of foam removed. Marcus peered inside, eyeing the foam core inner boxes nestled into the inner layers of spongy, dark grey foam. Working carefully, he lifted out the largest of the inner boxes, built to contain the small bronze figurine of a dancing faun. Beneath it was a hollowed out cavity, big enough to hold a small stack of encyclopedias, or some other large books. Wedged into this space, which had clearly not been intended for it, was a foam core inner box.

All of the foam core boxes made for objects in the Hartley-Dryden collection had been labeled with either the name of the piece, or its identifying storage number. This box bore no mark or number, and it took several moments for Marcus to wrestle it out of the cavity.

“Oh please,” he muttered, sliding to the floor of the truck until he was sitting with his back against the crate, the box balanced on his knees. “It’s heavy. This may be it. You open it, Esca. If it isn’t the eagle, you can do me a favor by hitting me over the head with whatever’s in there, and knocking me unconscious for a few blessed minutes.”

“That’s not funny,” Esca said, scowling, but he knelt beside Marcus and pulled back the Tyvek tape that fastened the box closed. Then he lifted the lid, and sighed.

“Well?” said Marcus, gritting his teeth, but one look at Esca’s pale face, and the faint smile that had materialized there, gave him his answer.

He looked down, into the box, and there was the gilded eagle, wings spread, fierce beak facing upward. The only visible damage was old damage, dating back centuries, mostly where the strong talons gripped the crossed thunderbolts that had once graced the top of a staff a standard-bearer—a legionary—would have carried into battle. Marcus ran a finger lightly over the gilded feathers, rigid beneath his touch, and the great, arching wings, awe-inspiring even now.

When he raised his head, he was almost dizzy with relief.

“Thanks, Esca,” he said, putting his hand to his brow and hoping the dizziness would not last.

“What for?”

“It was your idea to look in the larger crates. And to look for the space meant for the condition reports. That should have been obvious, but none of us thought of it. We would have wasted hours, wasted the rest of the night looking for this wretched thing, if it hadn’t been for you.”

“It was just a lucky guess,” replied Esca, who was also looking a little dizzy. “You would have found it anyway. Eventually.”

Between the two of them, they tucked the book of condition reports into the hollowed out space, closed the massive crate, and sealed it up. Then they placed the eagle, carefully wrapped in the softest grade of their acid-free tissue, in the empty crate that had been made for it, sealed it, and sat down on top of the crate, breathing hard.

“Where did that unmarked inner box come from, then?” Esca asked, rubbing his temples with both hands.

“It must have been a spare, an extra. But who put the eagle in there, and who packed it where it didn’t belong?”

“It couldn’t have been Placidus, as tempted as I am to blame him,” Esca mumbled. “He was in hospital when we went out to the estate to pack the art. And I doubt Stefano or Dru could have made such an error.”

“We may never figure it out,” Marcus replied heavily. “If one of the men did it, it was unintentional. And I really doubt that any one of them did. It’s occurred to me that it might have been Miss Anonymous after all…oh, not an intentional thing, not something she did on purpose, to make trouble. She saw that we were putting objects in foam core inner boxes, and simply plopped the eagle into one, thinking that it was the right thing to do. I wouldn’t be surprised if she put the box into the bottom of the big crate, either.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and put his face in his hands for a moment, before raising it to study his young companion.

“Should we ask her dad?” Esca said, meeting Marcus’s look with a weary smile. He slid off of the crate and knelt at Marcus’s feet, put his hands on Marcus’s knees, and stared up at him. In the glaring light of the portable lamp the crew had set up inside the truck for them, they both looked ghastly pale and sweaty, eyes ringed with the dark circles of fatigue.

“No, why make more trouble,” Marcus said, wrinkling his brow. He leaned forward, cupped Esca’s face in his dusty hands, and kissed him, feeling those pink lips open and soften beneath his, Esca’s sighing breath mingling with his own. Esca’s arms came up and wound about his neck, they leaned hard into each other, and Marcus fell off the crate with a thump.

Esca, upon whom Marcus had partly landed, gave a grunt as the air was driven from his lungs, but he didn’t let go, and the two of them rolled over several times on the hard, uncomfortable floor of the truck. They stopped kissing long enough to laugh feebly, in little gusts, and then Marcus forced himself to sit up, panting like a marathon runner, and pulled Esca into a sitting position next to him.

“We can’t, not here, not in the _truck_. I’m _filthy_ , and rank with sweat, and we could both use a drink and a shower, in that order. Come on, let’s check security, lock up, and get out of this place. Help me with this light, will you, Esca? Don’t just sit there looking fuckable.”

Esca’s hand reached up to trace the curve of Marcus’s broad cheekbone, the outline of his mouth, so full-lipped that it was almost lush, the little indentation of the dimple that appeared when he smiled.

“You’re a sweaty mess, yeah, but you’re a fucking beautiful bastard, all the same,” he murmured, and then blushed crimson. Marcus looked at him and laughed: Esca’s face was filmed with perspiration and striped with dust from Marcus’s fingers, his hair was damp and ruffled into feathers, but his lips were moist and a little swollen, his eyes limpid and the color of a stormy ocean.

It took them just under an hour to close the truck, lock the warehouse, set the alarm system, and make it back to the Aquila home without succumbing to the desire to yield to their lust in public, or to be more accurate, in the backseat of Marcus’s car. They maintained an air of propriety until they were safely ensconced in Marcus’s bedroom, where they pulled each other’s clothes off, and Marcus nearly dragged Esca into the shower, leaving their garments in a grubby heap on the floor.

In the steamy warmth of the shower, Marcus’s light olive skin was almost golden, and Esca’s seemed nearly translucent, like alabaster, but faintly flushed. They leaned against the marble wall of the shower stall, so as not to slip, and let their mouths and their slippery, soapy hands rove everywhere. By the time they staggered out of the bathroom, exhausted and very clean, they barely had the energy to dry themselves properly, fumble with the bedclothes, and arrange themselves, still naked, under the duvet.

“I’ll set the alarm clock,” mumbled Esca, fishing about for it on the bedside table. “Or we’ll never make the flight tomorrow. Are you feeling alright?”

“I’ve felt better,” replied Marcus, eyes already closed. “But it’s a great relief to know I won’t have to commit hara kiri, seppuku, whatever it’s called, to atone for the loss of a work of art.”

The mattress shook a little as Esca chuckled. “Yeah, and you’d probably bodge it up anyway,” he said, nudging Marcus in the ribs. “And find yourself in a hospital bed, next to Placidus.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

“If you’ve never been on a cargo flight, it’s quite an experience,” Marcus said.

“Er, well,” Esca mumbled, rubbing his eyes. “I keep thinking of that Tom Hanks movie, where he’s on a cargo flight and gets marooned on an uninhabited island with a…a football?”

“A volleyball,” Marcus replied absently. “You mean, ‘Castaway.’ He was flying over the South Pacific. We’re not.”

“Great,” said Esca, pressing his lips into a thin line. “We’ll be marooned on an island in the Atlantic, where it’ll be a lot colder.”

Marcus had ridden on cargo flights before, and was accustomed to waking early—another holdover from his brief soldiering career—but he had _not_ been looking forward to rising before dawn. This, time, however, things had been improved by the experience of waking to find Esca snuggled in his arms, silky cap of hair tickling his chin, one arm flung across his chest, fingers curled lightly against his skin. After a hurried breakfast, they had assembled their luggage and waited for Stefano to pick them up in the company car that would follow the truck to Heathrow.

As they waited on the front steps, Uncle Aquila had emerged, on his way to the Calleva office, a large thermos of coffee in one hand. He was going in early—it was barely seven o’clock—to catch up on some paperwork; he had wished them good luck, reminded Marcus to ring him from Kennedy Airport, and asked them if they had slept well. Marcus ignored the last part of the question, and gave him an abbreviated version of the search for the eagle and the events at the warehouse, minus the kissing, the night before. He had rung Stefano and Dru before leaving the warehouse, to allow them a restful night’s sleep in the knowledge that the eagle wasn’t missing after all, but had waited until morning to recount the entire story to his kinsman.

“Well,” said Uncle Aquila, after mulling over what Marcus had told him. “It appears to me that you’ve had more than enough drama for this particular contract, as important as it may be. But I’m pleased to hear that you found the wretched thing, and that we won’t be up to our necks in lawsuits. As the Romans said, ‘Eagle lost—honor lost; honor lost—all lost.’”

“I don’t know who is more obsessed with those long-dead Italian guys,” Marcus muttered, but with a hint of a smile. “You or Frank Calleva.”

“Frank easily surpasses me,” his uncle replied dryly. “Have a good flight. Enjoy New York. Oh, and Esca’s never been to America, you’ll look after him, I trust.”

He had patted his nephew on the shoulder and departed, before he could notice that Marcus was biting his lip, or that Esca had gone pale before turning an interesting shade of embarrassment.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The drive to the airport, in the company car, was uneventful, save that Stefano, and Dru—who had tagged along for the ride—kept asking for details of Marcus and Esca’s discovery of the incorrectly packed eagle. At Heathrow, too, there had been no delays, and the truck actually pulled up to the huge cargo bay area twenty minutes early.

Once the crates containing the Hartley-Dryden objects had been tied onto wooden pallets and loaded, with an assortment of other containers, into the cargo plane, Marcus and Esca located their seats and buckled themselves in. The interior of the airplane was fitted with enough seats for the crew and several guest passengers, and there were even pull-down beds, of the type found in the sleeping compartments in trains, attached to the wall. However, there were no luxuries, no in-flight movies, and certainly no flight attendants bearing drinks and food. Marcus was secretly pleased to see that Esca was finding the whole experience extremely diverting, peering about the cavernous, stripped-down interior of the plane with all the curiosity of a child invited into a candy factory.

He said as much, aloud, and Esca rolled his eyes.

“No, really,” said Marcus, amused. “You look like a five-year-old who expects a troupe of dancing tin soldiers or animated toy animals to come bursting out of those cargo containers.”

“You watched too many Disney cartoons as a child,” scoffed Esca, and Marcus laughed and aimed a crumpled up paper cup at his head.

They drowsed, on and off, for most of the flight, deplaning without incident at Kennedy Airport, and then watching as the pallets bearing the Hartley-Dryden crates were deposited in a holding area. It would be at least an hour before Customs cleared the crates, so that they could be loaded onto a truck from Calleva’s New York branch. Secure in this knowledge, Marcus led Esca to the airline terminal’s Arrivals lounge, where they were to meet a representative from Frank Calleva’s office.

It was with some surprise that Marcus saw the large, imposing figure of his uncle’s business partner and friend crossing the vast, echoing space towards them, rather than one of his junior employees. He alerted Esca by grasping his shoulder and jerking his chin in the man’s direction.

“That’s our boss,” Marcus explained. “The Big Boss. Uncle Aquila’s partner, Francesco Calleva. He’s the senior partner; he actually founded the company, hence the company name. He’s, you know, the one with the fetish for Roman-sounding names.”

“Hah!” Esca replied. “He’s not going to like mine, then.”

“Frank was a Classics major or something,” Marcus concluded. “A nice enough guy, if you don’t mind him blathering away—in Latin!—about Emperor Augustus, when he’s had a few. I wonder what he’s doing here, though. He doesn’t usually come to the airport to meet incoming staff; he leaves that to his underlings.”

“Perhaps he’s here to ask what we did to his Ops Manager, to send him to hospital,” quipped Esca, pushing his hair back from his brow. “Maybe he thinks we poisoned him.”

“I was tempted to,” Marcus muttered, before crossing the waiting area to shake hands with his uncle’s partner. Esca hovered in the background as Frank pounded Marcus on the shoulder, then embraced him, and slapped him on the back.

“You look well, my boy,” Frank said loudly and cheerfully. “Fantastic. Walking just fine, too, I see. Congratulations, kid. Sorry to hear Servius got sick in London; d’you think it was something he ate?”

“No, it appears to be the flu,” Marcus replied. Esca was looking wide-eyed at the company president; having shuttled back and forth between London and New York for most of his life, beginning in early childhood, Frank Calleva had the broad gestures of a stereotypical New Yorker, and an accent that veered haphazardly between British and…Brooklynish. His voice was booming and jovial, and so fascinated did Esca appear to be that he actually started when Marcus put out a hand, gesturing him forward. “Frank, may I introduce our newest, uh, summer recruit, Esca MacCunoval.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Frank, holding out a hand with a friendly smile. “Your uncle told me he was working for you. Good to meet you, Esco. I don’t know why we never met when I was living in London. I’ve heard fine things about you from my old friend.”

“Esca,” said Marcus. “Not Esco.”

“Right,” said Esca soberly, but with a gentle quirk of amusement at the corner of his mouth. “ _Meum nomen Esca est. Suave te cognoscere est_.”

“Ah!” said Frank, grinning broadly with pleasure. “ _Quid defluis_ , young man?”

“ _Caledonia defluo…Londinium habito_.”

“First time in the States, Esca?” Frank said, eyes still bright with astonishment. “You should spend a little time here, if you can. It’s a vast country. See the sights, _a mari usque ad mare_.”

“From sea to sea; yes, sir,” Esca said politely. “I should like to.”

“So should I,” interrupted Marcus, with a touch of irony. “But we can’t, not this trip. As soon as the opening’s over, we head back to London.”

“Well, you’ll be back here again, no doubt, so if you can’t do it this trip, you can the next. We‘re bringing a shipment of modern sculpture over in October; that might be a nice time to come.”

“Er,” said Esca, uneasily. “ _Volo non valeo_ —‘I am willing, but unable.’ I’m only working at Calleva for the summer, sir; I’ll be back to university come autumn.”

“Oh,” said Frank, somewhat deflated. “What a shame! And you speak Latin so nicely, too. Well, Esco, I mean Esca, you and I and Marcus should have dinner together sometime this week, before the Met’s exhibition opening. I’ll take you to the Grotta Azzura, in Little Italy. Or maybe to Eataly, or one of Mario Batali’s restaurants. Aha! I’ve just remembered! There’s one called _Esca_ , in the Hell’s Kitchen area.” His voice had gotten even louder and more jovial.

“Really?” said Esca, looking slightly overwhelmed. “ _Gratias. gratias multas, tu benignissimus es_.”

“If Placidus recovers and is back in New York by then, he can join us.”

“Great,” said Marcus, heroically, but when Frank motioned to them to follow him, stepping ahead at a brisk pace, he turned towards Esca and made a faint gagging sound behind the company president’s back.

Esca laughed involuntarily, although the expression in his eyes was rather bleak, and then said, “Do _you_ think Placidus will be here in time to join us?”

“Missing him already?”

“Shut up,” Esca said, a little testily, and Marcus reached out and touched him lightly on the elbow.

“Just a joke,” he said quietly, letting his touch linger for a moment, watching the flicker of annoyance in Esca’s eyes die down. “Relax. The hard part of this job’s done. There’s no need to be so prickly. I realize that’s your natural disposition, but—“

He was rewarded by a rueful smile as Esca shrugged his shoulders.

“Sorry, Marcus,” he said, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “All of this takes some getting used to. I’ll probably make a bloody horrific faux pas at the posh opening night party.”

“Mmm,” nodded Marcus, feigning solemn agreement. “Yeah, you probably will.”

The trace of sullenness left Esca’s eyes, and they began to dance. “Smug fucking git.”

“Come on, fellas,” Frank shouted, from twenty feet ahead. “Let’s get over to the cargo bay; we need to be there when they un-palletize the crates. _Vade recta_. _Tunc verte a dextra_.”

“Go straight, then make a right turn,” Esca translated out loud. “Is he always like this?”

As they closed the gap between themselves and the company president, Marcus turned to his young associate.

“You were brilliant,” Marcus said under his breath. “Brilliant, Esca. He’s your friend for life.”

“Why?” Esca whispered back. He was already looking much less out of sorts. “Because I nattered at him in Latin?”

“Exactly,” Marcus said with satisfaction. “Don’t bother to try him with Gaelic, he won’t understand a word. Alright, we’d better go to the cargo bay, and see to the crates. Ancient Rome awaits.”

As they made their way out of the terminal, in the direction of the cargo bays, Marcus glanced surreptitiously at the young man walking beside him, so trim and fit, so appealing, in his black jeans and new black company tee shirt, with its inconspicuous Calleva logo. Esca’s profile was to him, russet-brown hair gleaming with its hints of copper-bronze and blond, his long stride easily matching Marcus’s, in spite of their difference in height. The humorous exchange with Frank Calleva had reminded him of something he had been trying _not_ to think about: at the end of the summer, Esca would no longer be at Calleva Fine Arts, would return to his studies. And their…what could he call it?...their relationship? Their newly blossomed friendship, and their intense physical connection? He didn’t know, really, how Esca felt about him, whether this was, for Esca, a casual fling or something more significant. And they certainly had never discussed it. Marcus flinched, mentally, from the thought of Esca blithely departing for Cambridge, renewing university friendships, sleeping with somebody else.

Esca, who had eased his wounded spirit, and brought something warm and meaningful into his life.

Perhaps this was an issue they should get round to discussing…someday soon…just not _now_.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“That museum’s massive,” Esca murmured that night as he fumbled with the zip of his jeans. “I want to go back there, just to look at things. Their Greek and Roman section’s fantastic. You’ve been there before…how many times?”

“The Metropolitan? I never visited when I was a little kid, growing up in the South, but of course I went during my prep school years, and when I was at West Point. Yeah, the place is incredible. Well, you have a little more than a week to check it out; after that there’s the exhibition’s opening night, and we fly back to London the next day.”

The earlier part of the day had gone by with remarkably rapidity. The Hartley-Dryden crates had been driven into Manhattan, taken to the Metropolitan Museum, unloaded without mishap, and unpacked in one of the vast storage chambers, under the watchful gaze of a Registrar and two gimlet-eyed Objects Conservators. After signing a multitude of papers, and shaking hands all round, Marcus and Esca had been free to go.

Quite naturally, they had gone straight to their hotel, located within walking distance of the museum. There they dropped their bags in Marcus’s room, showered rapidly (and separately, to avoid delays), went downstairs for dinner in the hotel restaurant, and then nearly raced back to their floor, Marcus’s hand already sliding into the front of Esca’s jeans in the mirror-lined lift. He had been forced to pull it out again, when the lift stopped before reaching their floor, and a small group of giggling teenage girls stepped inside, but once they were alone in the blissful privacy of the hotel bedroom, they had kissed until they were both breathless, and then Marcus flopped down into an armchair to watch Esca undress.

The zip of the narrow black jeans was still giving Esca trouble, and he was attempting to lower it without breaking it altogether, or getting it caught in the denim fabric. Marcus finally got to his feet and went to help him, batting Esca’s hands away and tugging carefully at the zip, then pulling it smoothly down and liberating the bulge in the front of his briefs.

Esca dropped the rest of his clothing without any coquetry and stood for Marcus’s inspection. But Marcus was not in the mood for simply looking, and less than a minute later, they were grappling in the vast, white-sheeted hotel bed, wrestling playfully like oversized puppies, Esca nibbling lightly at Marcus’s shoulders and chest, and then sighing, eyes closed, when Marcus did the same to him. In a little while, Marcus rolled them neatly over, so that Esca was above him, and studied his face so intently that Esca stilled his caressing hands and stared back.

“There’s something from a poem by Thomas Wyatt that reminds me of you,” Marcus said, trying to control his breathing as he looked up into the sea-colored eyes in the taut, flushed face above him. “ _’Noli me tangere_ , for Caesar’s I am / And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.’ That’s you, Esca.”

“You’re joking,” replied Esca, looking mildly startled. “I hadn’t figured you for the poetry-reading type. _Noli me tangere_ —‘touch me not.’ You’ve been touching me a great deal, these past few days.”

“Well, you’re certainly wild for to hold, though you seem tame,” retorted Marcus, resting his hands on Esca’s slim waist. “It’s quite a combination—good looking, and smart, _and_ wild.”

“Wild, who says I’m wild?” Esca asked, eyebrows raised, shifting slightly so that he was fully on top, hips sliding down between Marcus’s legs. “And I’m not good looking; that’s you, you’re the handsome one.”

“Will you stop being so damn modest,” Marcus snapped, moving his fingertips over the hard smoothness of his companion’s back. “You’re, well, kind of beautiful. Why do you suppose Placidus was lusting after you? For the pleasure of your conversation? Come on, Esca, what do you think?”

“I think we should stop talking,” Esca murmured, pressing his mouth to the smooth dip in the center of Marcus’s chest, and then inching further down his body.

When he raised his head a little later, he was hot-eyed and gulping for breath, his lips swollen and flushed a deep pink. Marcus, panting and completely undone, made no objection when Esca slid upward between his parted thighs, and reached for the little tube on the bedside table.

“Um, Esca,” he said, and then fell silent, hoping his soldier’s stoicism would serve in the event that it hurt. But Esca was very gentle, very gradual, running his hands softly along Marcus’s flanks to relax him, stroking and then stretching him open with his fingers as he kissed him deeply, with a passionate fervor, to keep him from tensing. There was surprisingly little pain, apart from the moment when Esca pushed carefully through the first, tight, interior ring of muscle. It took a few moments for Marcus to accustom himself to the burn, and Esca moved slowly, sometimes stopping altogether, giving a choked cry when Marcus clenched around him experimentally. Then he drew out nearly all the way and pushed in smoothly, thrusting hard and coming unexpectedly fast, just as Marcus was beginning to feel a wave of pleasure building through his own body.

“Sorry,” gasped Esca, moments later. “That was too quick.”

“No,” Marcus growled, once he had got his breath. “That was perfect.”

“If that’s the case,” Esca whispered, with a mischievous grimace, “it’ll be even more perfect next time. I’m flattered to know you gave up your virginity to me, Marcus Aquila.”

“My—!” sputtered Marcus, rather stung. “What makes you say that? I was fucking cheerleaders in America when you were still a schoolboy.”

“It was your first time doing _that_ , wasn’t it?” Esca said calmly. “I mean, being on the receiving end. Don’t lose your temper, Marcus. I wasn’t joking, I _am_ flattered.” He threaded his fingers through Marcus’s and squeezed.

“Esca,” said Marcus in a dangerous voice, but his ire was fading quickly, and Esca could see that he was trying not to smile.

“You look really gorgeous when you’re angry,” Marcus heard him murmur earnestly, as he studied the mingled shades of jade and dark gold in Marcus’s hazel green eyes, the beautiful planes of cheeks and brow, those very full lips. “And you were…it was wonderful,” he added, and watched as those cheeks were suddenly suffused with a blush.

“My turn next time,” grumbled Marcus, slightly mollified. “I’ll show you wonderful.”

“I know you will,” Esca said, settling himself against Marcus’s shoulder.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On the night of the opening reception for the Hartley-Dryden collection’s exhibition at the Metropolitan, Marcus watched Esca rummaging in the hotel bedroom’s closet. (Although they were booked into adjacent rooms, they had been spending all of their time in Marcus’s.) He had gotten his hair trimmed that morning, and had examined the brand new suit he had purchased in London and brought for the occasion: a simple, slimly cut Armani, so dark a grey that it was almost black, and a lighter silvery-grey silk tie. Now, as Marcus tactfully vanished into the bathroom, where he anointed himself with cologne, carefully adjusted his gold tie clip, and then brushed his teeth for good measure, he could hear Esca swearing loudly as he wrestled himself into his new clothes.

As he stood still in the luxuriously appointed bathroom, giving Esca time, he examined himself, absently, in the mirror. He had never been particularly vain; aware of his own good looks but thinking of them only as a minor asset, less important than his athletic ability, highly tuned motor skills, and solid education. He could see that his dark suit fit his long, muscular body nicely, and that the starched collar of his white shirt didn’t hug the strong, broad column of his neck too tightly. He looked well groomed, self assured, and professional; that was all he needed to know, and it suddenly struck him that it had been a while since he had thought of his injury, and his now almost imperceptible limp, as disfiguring. For a moment his mind shied away from the implications of this, because of course it had something to do with Esca. Enough time to think about it later; they had an important social event to attend, and he was ready. Now, if Esca—

There was a crashing sound as Esca tripped over something—probably his new shoes—and a volley of curses, and Marcus stifled a chuckle, composing his features into an expression of encouragement as he turned the bathroom door handle.

“Are you ready?” Esca asked, a little tensely, as Marcus emerged from the bathroom wiping toothpaste from his lower lip.

“Are you?” Marcus retorted. His eyes swept over Esca, taking in his lithe, lean elegance in the dark suit, the flawlessly pressed white shirt, the ordinarily rumpled and feathered hair stylishly trimmed and lying tamed and shining against his head. “Well, well. What a transformation. I feel like Pygmalion.”

“You’ve been commenting on my transformation all week, and taking all the credit for it,” Esca said, scowling. Then he swallowed. “Let’s go. _Morituri te salutamus_.”

“So you’re a gladiator, are you?” Marcus murmured, grinning. “I remember that much: ’We who are about to die, salute you.’ Look, Esca, it won’t be that bad. Just a lot of rich people all dressed up, and a handful of newspaper critics. There won’t be enough to eat, but we’ll go out to dinner afterward.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The exhibition hall was crowded with well-dressed museum staff and guests, there were flowers on the refreshments tables, at one end of the room, far away from the art (a museum rule), and the light was of an appropriate dimness to satisfy the Met’s conservators. Although representatives of an art packing company were not exactly high on the list of important guests, Calleva Fine Arts had an excellent reputation, and it was known that the men who ran it—Frank Calleva and Uncle Aquila—were both skillful, painstaking administrators and minor scholars in their own right. Several curators spoke at length to Marcus, any number of female attendees eyed him and Esca with interest, and one of the Registrars told him that their work on behalf of the Hartley-Dryden exhibition had been spoken of with praise to the museum’s director.

They had partaken of the fussy little tidbits of finger-food that were typical of museum and gallery openings, and drunk a moderate amount of champagne, when Marcus spotted a familiar figure standing close to one of the male Registrars, engaging him in conversation.

“Oh look, it’s Placidus,” he muttered, and Esca’s mouth turned down at the corners.

Moments later, having smiled ingratiatingly at the museum curator, Placidus strolled over to his fellow Calleva employees, his eyes running over their flawless attire, surveying Esca’s with a touch of surprise that was almost offensive.

“How nice,” said Placidus, transferring his stare to Esca’s face. Esca’s eyes had gone smoke-grey under the UV-filtered lights in the exhibition hall, and he looked back at the New York Ops Manager with a steady gaze, mildly challenging but devoid of insolence.

“Good to see you, Servius,” Marcus lied valiantly. “Feeling better, are you? That was an unfortunate case of flu.”

“Very unfortunate,” said Placidus smoothly. “However, I’m feeling perfectly fit now. Quite energetic, in fact.” His tongue flicked out to brush his lips as he gave Esca another calculating once over. “Caught a flight to New York yesterday. Frank filled me in on everything.”

Marcus could only feel relieved that nobody had told Frank about the brief debacle with the Roman eagle, but he assumed an expression of polite interest, not really paying attention, as Placidus proceeded to give his opinion of the exhibition design, the Metropolitan’s staff, and what the invited guests were wearing. He was grateful when a museum Registrar collared Placidus five minutes into his monologue, taking him off to question him about the American branch of Calleva’s upcoming contract to move objects from the Met to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City.

“Oh, thank God,” breathed Marcus, and Esca gave a barely audible chuckle.

“Another half hour, and I think we can leave,” Marcus said after both of them had nearly finished what he thought should be their final glass of champagne. “It really is a beautiful exhibition. Too bad the Hartley-Drydens couldn’t come to see it. Even little Miss Anonymous might be impressed.”

Esca gave a brief laugh, and then his fingers brushed Marcus’s wrist. The hall had become even more crowded. Some of the serious, scholarly looking types assembled in groups, talking in undertones about the art, the younger guests smirked at the mosaic of the nymph and her prodigiously endowed admirer, or at the bronze satyrs with their pointy erections. Servius Placidus paused before a marble sculpture of a coyly posed, naked youth. (“Roman jail bait,” muttered Marcus.)  A number of couples—perhaps after having drunk more champagne than they should have—had drawn into the darker areas of the room, where they could commune a bit more intimately in the shadows.

“Here,” said Marcus abruptly, leading the way to one of the large, free-standing vitrines, or exhibition cases, and pulling Esca behind it. There, they were practically invisible to the rest of the hall. “Here’s to a job well done.” He drained the last few drops from his glass, and drew Esca towards him; Esca raised his face, one hand resting lightly on Marcus’s forearm, and kissed him.

“Good lord,” said a voice from a few feet away, and they turned, breaking apart, to see Placidus standing on the other side of the vitrine, peering at them with astonishment.

“Well, Servius,” said Marcus coolly, willing himself to look calm and unconcerned, and meeting Placidus’s knowing look without blinking.

“You’ve been slumming, I see, Marcus,” said Placidus, eyes flickering to Esca and then back again. “Rolling in the dirt. Just the sort of thing I had had in mind…now I see why I was unsuccessful.”

“Sod off,” Esca muttered, not too quietly, and Placidus’ carefully composed expression disintegrated a little as his face went pink.

“If I were you,” Marcus said levelly, keeping his eyes on Placidus’s face, “I would watch my manners. Unless you want somebody to break that nose for you a second time.”

Placidus’s face went from pink to scarlet, but he, too, held his ground.

“It’s none of my business, naturally,” he said, his voice silky. “Dear me, how charming. A workplace romance. Although it’s not likely to last; workplace romances rarely do. Well, Marcus. If you’ll excuse me. I have some professional schmoozing to do. I’ll see you before your return to London, no doubt, but in case I don’t, my best regards to your uncle.”

“We fly back tomorrow,” Marcus said shortly, and Placidus raised a languid eyebrow.

“Ah. Well then. I wish you both a _restful_ night and a comfortable flight. At least it won’t be in a cargo plane.”

As Servius Placidus slid away, vanishing into the crowd of stylishly dressed attendees, Marcus caught sight of Frank Calleva coming towards them, smiling genially as he usually did, and waving a glass of champagne.

“Here comes the Big Boss,” he murmured to Esca, who was staring coldly after the departing Ops Manager. “It’ll be okay, Esca, but we should try to look like we’re dutifully socializing.”

Esca obediently turned to talk with several museum personnel, just as Frank strode to Marcus’s side and shook his hand energetically.

“Going well, don’t you think?” he said exuberantly, gesturing at the milling, glittering guests. “The art will be here for eight weeks; then the exhibition closes, and everything goes back to the owners. Quite a crowd, isn’t it? You saw Servius, didn’t you? I suppose you had a few things to catch up on.”

“Yes,” said Marcus, declining to elaborate. Placidus would undoubtedly say something to his boss later on, and then the whole thing would come out anyway, at least to the other Calleva employees, and eventually to his Uncle Aquila.

“There’s a fine young man,” Frank said to Marcus, glancing approvingly at Esca, who was conversing with one of the museum’s technicians. “I hope he keeps up with his Latin studies.”

“Actually, he’s studying Roman Britain,” Marcus murmured, watching the muted, filtered light in the exhibition hall play over Esca’s keen features and bright hair. “And he’s one hell of an intelligent guy. Good to work with. Good sense of humor and, uh, great personality.”

“Hmmm,” said Frank, jokingly. “It sounds like you have a mancrush on the kid, my friend.”

“Yeah, yeah, I love him,” Marcus replied, also in a joking tone of voice. “We cuddle.” He had meant to sound amusing, and was gratified when Frank threw back his head with a cheerful laugh.

Marcus wasn’t certain Frank would laugh quite so heartily once he had spoken with Placidus. Not that he was likely to be judgmental, but he would be surprised, and he would almost certainly say something to Uncle Aquila.

Well, so what?

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Or, as his own countrymen might say _, in for an inch, in for a mile_ , or, alternately, _you may as well_ _go the whole hog_.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Busted,” said Esca, wryly. “Because of a kiss. And we thought nobody would see us.”

To Marcus’s relief, he did not sound particularly put out or upset. In fact, he was even grinning a little.

“Will we be in trouble?”

“Oh, Frank’s not a homophobe,” Marcus replied, untangling his fingers from Esca’s hair. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have hired Placidus, who’s as _out_ as he possibly could be. Everybody knows about Placidus’s boyfriend, that aging bigwig at the Smithsonian Institute in DC. As for you and me, I don’t suppose anybody back home will care. The men will make jokes, and that’s all. Uncle Aquila…well, I don’t know. But I’m not going to have a heart attack worrying about it. He’s always been an open minded guy.”

“I don’t know either,” Esca said, stretching, and then pressing the lean, hard, silky length of his body against Marcus’s. “But…I don’t think we have to worry. I…think it’ll be fine. Your uncle’s a very accepting sort of person. He took _me_ in, didn’t he?”

“That’s different,” said Marcus. “You were a kid, with nobody, or almost nobody, to take responsibility for you. I mean, I know you were pretty self-sufficient, but—“

“He put me through school,” Esca said, seriously, lifting his head from the pillow. “Then he spoke to people at Cambridge on my behalf. Granted, I won a scholarship, but still…”

“You didn’t pay any attention to what that asshole Placidus said, did you?” Marcus growled, remembering. “All his stupid talk about me slumming. For pity’s sake. You’re the one with advanced university degrees, or at least, you’re working towards them. All I have is a Bachelor’s. Just because your mother used to keep house for my uncle—“

“Your Bachelor degree is from West Point,” Esca interrupted. “Very prestigious. And no, I don’t really care about what that arsehole said, and I know you don’t think you’re slumming when you’re, uh, with me, and I know you don’t really care about things like old-fashioned class differences. If there’s one thing I know about you, Marcus Aquila, it’s that you have a durable sense of honor and ethics.”

“Thanks,” said Marcus dourly. “That and a couple of bucks will get me on the subway.”

“What?” said Esca, confused. “What does this have to do with the subway?”

“It’s an American expression,” Marcus said. “Never mind. But thanks for the compliment.”

“Placidus,” Esca said scornfully, “is a total dick, what you Americans call an absolute fucktard. There must be equivalents in every language. What would you call him in Italian?”

“I haven’t any idea,” said Marcus honestly. “My Italian vocabulary doesn’t extend to fucktards. In fact, it doesn’t extend to much, period. My _Latin’s_ probably better than my Italian.”

“Really?” asked Esca, squinting at him. “Bloody hell. Your uncle speaks it. And you’re Italian.”

“Italian-American, for Chrissake,” Marcus said, squinting back. They were so close, almost nose to nose, that it was difficult to focus. “Uncle Aquila’s Italian is fluent, but my dad’s wasn’t. I can only speak it a little.”

“Well, I can barely speak any,” Esca mumbled. “Even though it’s so close to Latin. Say something for me, in Italian, please.”

“That’s crap, and you know it,” Marcus snapped, gently swatting the top of Esca’s head. “You can speak _Sicilian_ , for fuck’s sake. If you can understand that, you can probably follow standard Italian with no difficulty.”

“Only somewhat,” Esca replied, judiciously. “They’re quite different, you know. My Sicilian’s hardly fluent, anyway. Words and phrases I picked up from some friends from Syracuse. Just indulge me, Marcus. Say something.”

“ _Va bene, stupido_ ,” Marcus muttered, pulling Esca against him until his head was tucked beneath his chin. He cleared his throat, said “ _Ti amo_ ,” gruffly, and lapsed into silence.

Even if Esca had known no Italian at all, this would be in no way difficult to figure out; the words were almost a match in Latin. Marcus was glad for the semi darkness of the room, and the fact that Esca’s face was pressed against his throat, so he didn’t have to attempt to read his expression.

“That’s pretty,” Esca whispered after a moment. “What am I supposed to say in reply?”

“What about, _anch’io ti amo_ ,” Marcus said, still gruffly. “And put a little emotion into it, will you?”

“Christ, you’re bossy,” Esca replied, and Marcus felt his lips curve in a smile. “Do you always try to tell people what to do and how to do it?”

“Yes,” said Marcus. “In most cases. It’s habit. But I make an effort to be nice about it. I’m civilized.”

“Civilized,” said Esca with a little laugh. “I suppose. And with brains as well as brawn.”

“Don’t you forget it,” Marcus said sternly, hoping he wasn’t pushing things too fast, and trying for a touch of comic relief. “That’s why you love me, isn’t it?”

Esca didn’t laugh, but when he raised his head Marcus could see that he was smiling, just a little wistfully.

“Yeah,” he said, almost resignedly, and so quietly that Marcus could barely hear him. “That’s why I’m _in love_ with you, you smug bastard.”

Marcus realized that he had been holding his breath, and let it out in a great whoosh, before wrapping both arms around Esca and sighing deeply into his hair.

“Esca,” he mumbled after a moment of silence, “do you remember what you started to say before you fell asleep, that first night we, uh…”

“About the time you rescued me, when I was twelve? Oh. I was just reminding myself that that was the first time I felt that you were someone special. And that you were, er, really nice to look at. _Hot_. It confused me for a while.”

“Really?” said Marcus, both pleased and touched. “And you were such a withdrawn, fierce-faced, scrawny little kid. Scrappy. Intense.”

“Oh, shut up, Marcus,” said Esca, grinning. “You were little more than a kid yourself.”

“You’ve grown up very satisfactorily, though. And talk about hot…” Marcus ran his hand gently along Esca’s thigh.

“I can’t wait,” murmured Esca, in a tone of false despair, “to see Cottia’s gloating face.”

“Your turn to shut up, Esca,” Marcus said in an authoritarian voice, and rolled on top.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Now _that_ I was not expecting,” said Uncle Aquila, arms folded and eyebrows raised as he surveyed the two young men before him.

“You’ve spoken with Frank Calleva,” Marcus said flatly. He looked his uncle straight in the eye, and noticed, in one rapid side glance, that Esca was also looking at him, his chin lifted in the courteous but slightly defiant manner Marcus had seen him display since his childhood.

He and Esca had come straight to the Aquila house after leaving the airport, and they were tired and in need of food and drink. However, Marcus thought it best to face his uncle at once, and indeed, he had been waiting for them in the sitting room when they arrived.

“Yes, Frank rang me, this morning our time,” Uncle Aquila said. “It must have been after midnight in New York.” He paused for a moment, but neither Marcus nor Esca spoke. “He told me the opening went well, and that the two of you had done good work. Then he said what a fine couple you made, and that he hoped things would go well for you in the future. And that if you ever decide to enter into a civil union, he would be pleased to fly over to London to attend. That took me by surprise, as you can imagine.”

“Er,” said Esca faintly, but Marcus interrupted him.

“Well, it’s true,” he said, still meeting his uncle’s eyes. “We’re in a _relationship_ , to put it simply. It hasn’t been for long, but it’s genuine. I’m sorry to shock you, Uncle, but, well, that’s the way it is.”

After a brief silence, Uncle Aquila cleared his throat. “Shock is perhaps not the correct word. I make no moral judgments, and have no moral objections…I am, though, a little surprised that you put _Frank_ in the picture before you ever mentioned anything to me.”

“We didn’t,” Marcus said hastily. “Placidus saw us, uh, holding hands in the exhibition hall, and said something to Frank; we certainly didn’t.” He met his uncle’s questioning look with a slightly rueful smile. “To tell you the truth, I think Servius was jealous.”

“I should hate to think that we were doing anything you disapprove of behind your back,” Esca began, a little hesitantly, but Uncle Aquila raised his hand.

“What goes on behind closed doors is none of my affair,” he said with surprising affability, one hand tugging absently at his white beard. “You needn’t feel obliged to move out. On the other hand, if you wish to get a place of your own, I understand completely. My suggestion is that you take your time to think things over, and whilst you do so, you are more than welcome to remain here. It’s a big house, and there’s plenty of room. And I…well, I rather enjoy the company. Take your time, as I said. I don’t doubt I’ll be in agreement with whatever you decide.”

Esca fidgeted and swallowed hard, but Marcus met his uncle’s look with calm gratitude. “Thank you, sir. I have a great deal more to thank you for than your understanding…but I think you know what I mean.”

Uncle Aquila made a harrumphing sound deep in his throat, and scowled, but his eyes, when they rested on his nephew, were kindly.

Esca said, in a low voice, “I’ve been indebted to you for many years, sir. I have you to thank for my room and board, for my education, for my life, the way it is now.”

“I’ve never regretted it, my boy,” Uncle Aquila replied gently. “You’ve been a credit to us.”

“Except for the way he dresses,” Marcus blurted out without thinking, and Esca glared at him, before subsiding into a self-deprecating grin.

“I can’t say I ever really notice how any of you young people dress,” said Uncle Aquila in his driest voice. “In fact, I do my best not to. Hmm, Marcus. The Hartley-Dryden contract was a job well done. I should say, will be a job well done; we still need to bring the art back from the States, once the exhibition closes.”

“Frank’s people in New York can handle the re-packing, and load the crates onto the plane,” Marcus said. “We won’t have to do much more than return the art to the Anony—to the Hartley-Dryden family, once it arrives, sir.”

“Sir?” said Uncle Aquila crossly. “What _is_ all of this _sir_? Since when have either of you addressed me as sir?”

“As for my being grateful, I’m not just talking about my job, Uncle,” Marcus continued, unfazed. “There’s a great deal I owe you for, apart from that…”

“Bah!” said Uncle Aquila fiercely, studying his signet ring with great concentration. “No one else to turn to me. No son of my own to plague me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some paperwork to finish. I’ll expect to see you both at dinner.”

As his uncle strode off in the direction of his study, Marcus stood stock still, caught between mild amazement and what he was beginning to realize was happiness. He heard the click of the study door, and then felt a gentle pressure against his side, as Esca nudged him lightly with his elbow.

“He thinks you’ve done well,” he murmured, withdrawing his elbow but stepping close enough for Marcus to feel his warmth, without their actually touching. “And he probably has plans for you to succeed him at Calleva…if that’s what you want. Not bad, for an ex-military man.”

“Oh?” replied Marcus, raising both eyebrows. “And what makes you such an expert on military men?”

“I’m not,” said Esca, turning his ironic grey-blue gaze on his lover. “But don’t you remember what Ovid said? _Militiae species amor est_. ‘Love is a kind of military service.’”

# FINIS

**_Disclaimers:_ ** _I have forgotten 99% of the Latin I studied, so most of the Latin sentences included here were cobbled together from the internet. This fic includes a few scattered lines that are not mine but are quotes from the following: “The Eagle” film, the novel “The Eagle of the Ninth,” by Rosemary Sutcliff, a red-carpet interview with Channing Tatum in London, and DVD behind-the-scenes extras from Jamie Bell’s 2007 film, “Hallam Foe.” (The “Where’s me cleanser” bit can also be seen on youtube.) There really is a restaurant called “Esca” in the Hell’s Kitchen district of Manhattan, New York City; it serves upscale Southern Italian cuisine and is part of Mario Batali’s restaurant empire._

**_Acknowledgements:_ ** _My undying thanks go to Winterstorrm, who (in addition to beta-ing this fic) has been a patient and generous mentor, and helped this technology-challenged bumbler (me) through the labyrinth of LJ. Also to the talented, kind, and creative Savagesnakes, who agreed to illustrate this story, providing gorgeous images at very short notice!_


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